Spot on, they always like to act as if we are absurd for disliking Ashley and point to him spending money, they hate any mention of the actual net spend being low. Yet when it comes to Short they often just spent lots and rarely recouped anything back, players like Khazri, N’Dong, Borini, and (convicted Paedophile) Adam Johnson all cost around our club record fee and that’s just a sample of the very recent ones (3 of which they still have on their books, they all wish they had the 4th despite his transgressions). There are plenty more like Bent, Gyan, etc.
They love to act like our fan base is full of morons and Ashley is doing a good job despite us. If that’s the case I’d put a lot of Short’s failures right at their door, how is he supposed to account for fans of the club racially abusing the star players mother which made him leave the club? Or hounding out the best manager they’ve had in yonks because he happened to be from Newcastle (despite him showing no affinity towards NUFC at any point in his career)? He also had to constantly over pay for players as Sunderland is probably the worst (if not the worst) destination in the PL as a ‘city’, so his only option was to offer players more than the going rate. They like to try and act like we’re in that bracket with them and while we may lose out on some that want to live in London we definitely don’t face that issue to the extent they do.
The fact they fucking hate this bloke and are lapping up these two chancers because they are kissing up a bit and ‘rolling up their sleeves’ shows their mentality. They can’t get their heads around why we don’t like Ashley, they just need to look at Short and imagine if he was tighter with the budget, renamed the stadium to advertise his brand for fuck all, hired an MD that literally said “they don’t know how nasty we can be” about the fan base, hired Joe Kinnear multiple times, treat not one, but two club legends with absolute disdain to the point one of them sued the club and won. That’s only half of it as well. They blame Short as it’s a shield, he tried to make them a competitive side but despite spending money and doing all he could it just wouldn’t happen, so rather than acknowledge their lack of potential as a club (short of a Man City style takeover which you could say about any club) they call him a nasty shit owner.