Quick Throw: Steve Bruce to Sunderland Is Imminent

Wigan continues its strategy of buy-low sell-high as Steve Bruce has been given permission to talk to Sunderland, with an official move to the Black Cats expected within 48 hours. Wigan gets somewhere under 5 million pounds in return, and will likely announce Roberto Martínez, Swansea City manager and former Wigan player, as Bruce's replacement.

[Guardian]

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Turning Cisse

The life and style of Djibril Cisse is well-documented, as is his dedication to changing from one ridiculous hairstyle to another, not to mention his incredible ability to break his own legs. He's not bad for scoring goals either, if you don't mind them appearing as infrequently as Radiohead in the USA.

What you may not know about him is that he is rather fond of fashion, and owns a clothing shop, and being the brave, exclusive-sniffing journalists that they are, the Daily Mail sent a flack down to his shop to get a Cisse makeover.

As you'd expect, the results are absolutely ridiculous.

The Mail isn't exactly the newspaper of the hip-hop loving, youthful demographic, but they managed to cover the exuberance of "the young people's clothes" without being too snarky or frightened in their special "WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY!!!!" kind of way. That's what they do, being the wonderful social conservatives that they are.

Peep the before and after

Of course, Cisse still does it in his own special way: the Sunderland striker's store is in Newcastle, and while he leaves day-to-day operations to his staff, he does pop in several times a week to catch up.

Said the striker:

"It is to show the way I see clothes and fashion to the people. It is a different style but it is what I like and my advice to people would be to just come and look, see if they see something. If they don't... (shoulder shrug)...

The boutique is something I've had planned for a while. I come in after training for a few hours if I can, have a mooch around, help out a bit and go back home. We have items here you will not find anywhere else. The idea is exclusivity and something different. If there was one word for it, it is different."

Aye Djibril, it certainly is different, mate.

You wonder whether the store will go out of business once those Geordies that can read figure out that the The Pr9ject on Forth Street is his.

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UF Quick Throw: Sbragia Gets The Gig.

Ricky Sbragia has been appointed Sunderland manager after a succesfull spell as interim manager. Sbragia was Roy Keane's assistant and since the Irishman walked, he has delivered 2 wins out of his 4 games in charge, scoring 8 goals and conceding just 2. The 1-0 loss to Manchester United the only blip on his record. Sbragia has signed an 18 month contract..

And here is the rest of it.

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UF Quick Throw: Keane gets a sorry

Sunderland have apologized to Roy Keane, and he's accepted. Shouldn't it be the other way round? The article also mentions he is eager to return to management. Who would hire such a quiet quitter?

[The Guardian]

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Keane Is Leaving

Nope, sorry Liverpool fans, as the above picture suggests, it is not Robbie Keane that has picked up his ineffective arse and skipped town. He's still at Anfield, enjoying Siesta with his injury-prone strike partner. Instead, it is the king prawn himself, Roy Keane, who stepped down as manager of Sunderland. He resigned today after 2+ seasons with the Black Cats. A perfunctory review of his tenure after the jump.


Plenty of time for these now...

May, 2006-- Sunderland are relegated from the Premier League after finishing with 15 points on 3 wins, a record for futilily at the time, and only surpassed by the '07-'08 Derby County squad (1 win, 8 draws.)

May, 2006-- Midfielder Roy Keane retires from professional football after spending final season at Celtic.

August, 2006-- Sunderland name Keane manager, replacing Chairman Niall Quinn, who had acted as caretaker after firing Mick McCarthy in March.

August, 2006 - May, 2007-- Keane's Sunderland earn promotion back into the Prem with their second League Championship title (88 points on 27 wins.)

August, 2007-- Keane signs keeper Craig Gordon for 9-million pounds, making him club's most expensive player ever. Sunderland open the season with a 1-0 win at home against Tottenham, who couldn't defend set pieces then, and still two managers later, have done nothing to improve in this respect.

May, 2008-- Sunderland finish season in 15th place on 39 points, 3 clear of the relegation zone.

Summer, 2008-- Keane spends big to upgrade club, bringing in three from Spurs (Chimbonda, Malbranque, Tainio), Anton Ferdinand, Djibril Cisse, and a bunch of other crappy to average players.

December 4, 2008-- The Sunderland board "reluctantly" accepts Keane's resignation after the club wins only 4 of first Premier League 15 games. They sit in 18th place, with Keane's old buddies at Man U. on tap this Saturday. The Irishmen skips town before the inevitable mollywhopping.

Roy Keane managed 100 games at Sunderland.

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A new American in the EPL

He's the one on the left. Not so short, then.

From Sports Illustrated online

Texas businessman Ellis Short bought a significant stake in Sunderland, the English Premier League told The Associated Press on Friday.

Short is co-founder of Dallas-based private equity group Lone Star Funds. In August, he acquired more than 30 percent of the consortium that owns the club in northeast England.

I thought Friday afternoons were when you released the bad news. Maybe this is bad news over there. I don't know. What I also don't know is who, exactly, Ellis Short is. Follow after the jump to find out with me.

Geez, Short's wiki is only slightly longer than mine. Not a lot of info there. The SI article mentions that he did not buy the club outright, but instead bought into the above consortium, Drumaville, which bought Sunderland in 2006. Drumaville, to the best of my knowledge, was put together solely to buy Sunderland. Before the new purchase by Ellis, it was a group of nine people, headed by former Black Cat Niall Quinn. There has been no information released as to who sold the 30%+ of shares to Ellis.

So what about Ellis? His money seems to come from Lone Star Funds, a private equity firm based out of Dallas. According to their website, LSF has assets totaling over $13 billion. LSF work all over the world, but not always cleanly. According to the Japanese government, LSF purchased a bank, transferred funds via a shell, and failed to pay taxes on the profit. The government has had no luck in resolving the case. He has also faced problems in South Korea. In 2006, the government sought extradition for Ellis in a case that sounds a lot like the Japanese one.

Beyond that, very little is known publicly about Ellis. He is married, and according to this story, she is a wonderful woman. Ellis also owns a Scottish castle, and is therefore living my dream.

Offhand, he sounds a bit like Mike Ashley before Ashley purchased Newcastle. They both made a shedload of money off of businesses they started, but stayed out of the press for the most part. Seriously, beyond today's stories on Ellis' takeover, there is very little else about him online. Wonder if Ellis will pork up and start showing up everywhere in a Sunderland jersey?

By the way, he knows his castle is in Sutherland, and the club is Sunderland, right?

Another take on this at EPL Talk

Thanks to jjf3 for using the tipline on this one

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EPL: Previews: Sunderland AFC

You can't talk about Sunderland without talking about Blighted English Shipping Towns, Sex Parties, and yes, Roy Keane. Whenever they think they are going to turn the corner, there is someone there to kick them in the knees. Just a few days ago, a Tory-friendly think-tank ravages the northern cities like Sunderland and urging people to give up and move. In a quote from the report, they state:

"Sunderland demonstrates just how hard it is to regenerate such a city. It is time to stop pretending there is a bright future for Sunderland and ask ourselves instead what we need to do to offer people in Sunderland better prospects."

As goes Jones, so goes the season.

They have a point: stop pretending there is a bright future for Sunderland and ask ourselves why don't they move it along?



We strive to be positive here, so I'll be positive about Sunderland - their biggest fan website is named after a wonder John Coltrane Song that always moves me in a positive way. We can only hope it moves the Sunderland fans positively.

Sunderland is a team that will live and die by its coach. But when the coach overshadows their best players, this is a sign that it will be a team dragged through the season performing up to their level of mediocrity. They lost 21 matches last year, only registering six draws. Yet, they managed to hang on and avoided relegation. Now they feel flush with success.

Talent?
They picked up Steed Malbranque and El-Hadji Diouf in the transfer market. This will help them hold onto the ball as they seemed to suffer from that fact last year. They picked up three of the four players from Tottenham that Keane wanted.

Chopra is sitting out a suspension for three games, and Kenwyne Jones and his hobbling knee was recently worked on, and the club is hanging its hopes on the idea that he can start practicing in October, and not Christmas as first thought. Jones is a leader on the pitch, and held up the line. This will leave a void for Coach Roy to scramble to fill. Keiran Richardson has come over from Man. U. and, if he can stay healthy, he will have something to prove.

No One Wants To Play Here
Keane spent 40 Million Pounds in the transfer market last summer, and the news was the WaGs were not happy with the shopping up there. Meanwhile, they managed to save themselves from relegation. He's spending all of his time trying to put a good face on the town. They need someone in the midfield to replace Jonny Evans, who couldn't wait to split town. They still need a striker.

Prediction
Sunderland's idea of tactical planning is 'surprising' Liverpool and jumping ahead early. This will be somewhat of a challenge, as they conceded the first goal in 24 matches last year. They started fast last year, before shooting their collective wad early, and dropping off the map. Maybe someone should tell Keane the season is much longer than 8 matches.

Many hope this will be the year that they end up getting relegated. I for one, don't see that happening. They will end up in the middle of the pack, muddling along. Which may be the best this once-busy blue collar town can hope for.

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Liam Miller can't keep time

At least Keane can't do this to his players now that he's an authority figure

Some of us at UF were somewhat confused the other day regarding Liam Miller suddenly turning up on the transfer list up at Sunderland.

He's only 27, he's industrious when he's on the pitch, and he's been capped plenty of times by the Republic of Ireland. Just what you'd want on your team, right?

Not Roy Keane. He's absolutely fucking sick and tired of Miller always being late, and that is more important to the manager than getting results.

Said Keane:

"The problem is Liam's time-keeping, it is as simple as that. It is nothing to do with Liam as a player or as a lad. I have got a lot of time for Liam, but we set a very high standard at the football club and unfortunately, Liam has been unable to match that, so we have put him on the transfer list and we will see what happens."

Keane's regime is firm but fair, and he's been trying for a while to get a well-disciplined squad much like Tom Coughlin did at the start of last season [you know, the season before they won the Super Bowl]. He left a few players out of a game against Barnsley [can't type that team easily] last season in the Championship because they turned up late for the team bus, and while this incident with Miller is more extreme, it's still hardly surprising.

Keane's patience simply ran out:

"Miller had a long string of not showing up on time, and "You have got to be on time for training. If a player is late once or twice, well and good; if he is late three or four times, maybe well and good. But when it goes beyond five, six, seven times, then you have got to draw the line. In any walk of life, you have got to be on time. We had an incident last year when players were late for the bus, and you move on. We cannot wait for anybody at the club."

Miller's future at the club is still possible, but it seems like only a matter of time before he gets snapped up for cheap when the window opens again.

My advice to Miller: get a bloody watch.

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