Niall Quinn Whining about his shit fans again

[Happy Face 29]

IS it the death of a dream? That is the question facing every Sunderland fan this morning and the man who is posing it is one of the most popular ever to pull on the famous red-and-white shirt, chairman Niall Quinn.

 

His dream – let’s call it “vision” because that’s Quinn’s own word – is that Sunderland, one of England’s oldest and most famous clubs, could be rallied and remodelled from their post-war slumbers to take on the biggest and best in the Premier League.

 

Quinn arrived at Sunderland as a player late in his career and proceeded to play his best football there. He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

When Bob Murray, the chairman behind the modernisation, quit to make way for new investment, it was Quinn who returned with fellow-Irish businessmen backing the club. That initial bubble burst with the Irish economy in 2008 so Quinn, pursuing his vision, found and delivered Texan billionaire Ellis Short.

 

“The vision is that with our passion, we have a chance of competing with the best,” he said. “In the first season after our last promotion we averaged a fantastic 44,000 and spent most of the season in the bottom three but managed to scrape out of the relegation places in the last few games – that struggle did not seem to bother us at the gate.

 

“I told Ellis that with a base of 44,000 we could build on that and take on the bigger boys – not with similar investment to the very biggest clubs but with raw passion and emotion. It adds a different component and makes us a big club. It’s what makes Sunderland special and difficult to beat.

 

“That was my vision, that’s what I put to Ellis and he bought into that. Our rise on the pitch has been steady and until our recent wobble we’ve spent much of the winter in the top six or seven but the gates, instead of improving with the team, have gone the other way, down to about 38,000 this season.

 

“That can’t continue. If it does, it may be the end of my vision. I’m not sure I could continue to ask the owner to underwrite that.”

 

What follows next for Quinn is a battle to win back those lost fans – not, he believes, lost as Sunderland followers but lost at the gate. Many have defected to illegal broadcasts of Sunderland home matches, shown in pubs, clubs and bars in the club’s heartland every Saturday afternoon – live – when they were populating the Stadium of Light’s stands in past years. How many? Quinn believes it could be a staggering 10,000 screen defectors for every home game.

 

“This is not anecdotal,” he assured me. “We’ve done our research. We’ve had Premier League observers investigate what’s going on. There is one typical town in our heartland which has around 50 pubs, clubs, cricket clubs, social clubs and other bars. They found 37 of those 50 were showing our games live, illegally. That’s just one town and I could name another 12 in our area where the same thing is happening.

 

“If just 30 people are watching in each bar – and that’s a conservative number – you see the scale of the problem.

 

“Those fans may be saving on a match ticket but they’re still turning up to have their fish and chips, beer or sandwiches. I don’t think all of them can’t afford to watch us.” Quinn is now going on the campaign trail again over the next four to six weeks. He will meet the stayaways and urge them to return to keep the “vision” alive.

 

“Ellis Short has kept his side of the bargain,” says Quinn. “I’m announcing that Ellis put in another £28million of his own money last season. And yet the crowds will have gone down a further 10 per cent.

 

“In these next four to six weeks I am going out into the heartland again. I am going to speak to our fans and I’ll get the message out there. There will be no holds barred. The future shape of the club depends on that. The fans in front of those illegal screens or at home watching illegal sites on their home computers perhaps do not understand how critical it is. If I don’t win them back, the club may have to downsize and cut its cloth differently. It’ll be difficult to follow up on the current investment and players may have to be sold.

 

“Manchester United have just announced turnover of £289m; ours is £64m. We can’t compete financially with that. Our missing 10,000 fans cost us £1.8m over the season so a figure like that won’t make the difference in allowing us to compete – it is those fans being inside the ground and making it a hostile place for visiting sides that makes the difference.

 

“When United came earlier in the season the ground was full and rocking and in the closing moments Sir Alex Ferguson was screaming for the referee to end it. He doesn’t normally do that...that’s the difference I’m talking about.

 

“What I want from our fans is their atmospheric input. That’s what makes the place special. If they don’t come back, we may not be the club I thought we were and could be. Me, finish as chairman? I don’t want to ask myself that question but it will mean events have not gone the way we want.”

 

Critics say Quinn underestimates the economic factors. Sunderland is feeling the recession more than most cities and is still coming to terms with the loss of massive industries.

 

“People have accused me of just wanting fans’ money in an area where it is just not affordable,” he admits. “That’s not my complaint. If any one of our fans tells me: ‘Look, I just can’t afford to watch you’, I can have no problem with that.

 

“But we do our level best to make Sunderland good value to watch. We’re right up there in the top places in the table but we are 18th in the league of season-ticket prices. Only two Premier clubs are cheaper to watch than us.

 

“Among the first reactions to what I said in the programme, a stayaway said we hadn’t repainted some parts of the stadium and the concourses were dreary – stuff like that.

 

“That’s not the Sunderland fans I know and love...the miners who stood up to Thatcher; the fans who follow us through thick and thin...staying away because the concourses may need a lick of paint? That’s a worry.

 

“Look, if we get 45,000 season-ticket holders for next season, I will get down on my knees and apologise to them all – but it will have been worth it to get them back in the fold.

 

“If we fail then I’ll do my best for our existing 30,000 season-ticket holders and our other 7-8,000 regulars – other than that, the club’s progress will have been stunted.”

 

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/229761...k#ixzz1EIavgSQP

 

Has agent Bridget whacked up the council tax or summat?

[OTF 7496]

I'd have to say he's got several valid points there.

 

They have shown ambition above their current station and even still can't fill their stadium.

[NJS 4411]

The games are available in the pubs because of the Sky deal which contributes massively to their turnover - I think he should realise that before having a go.

 

He also needs to realise their crowd has found its true modern level - I can't see why more Mackems would want to go at the moment.

Edited February 18, 2011 by NJS

[Ketsbaia 0]

He's getting on my tits now, God knows how the Mackems feel.

 

If he's so bothered about filling the stadium and it's not an issue of finance why does he gladly move games for Sky & ESPN like he did with Spurs last week?

[snakehips 0]

IS it the death of a dream? That is the question facing every Sunderland fan this morning and the man who is posing it is one of the most popular ever to pull on the famous red-and-white shirt, chairman Niall Quinn.

 

His dream – let’s call it “vision” because that’s Quinn’s own word – is that Sunderland, one of England’s oldest and most famous clubs, could be rallied and remodelled from their post-war slumbers to take on the biggest and best in the Premier League.

 

Quinn arrived at Sunderland as a player late in his career and proceeded to play his best football there. He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

When Bob Murray, the chairman behind the modernisation, quit to make way for new investment, it was Quinn who returned with fellow-Irish businessmen backing the club. That initial bubble burst with the Irish economy in 2008 so Quinn, pursuing his vision, found and delivered Texan billionaire Ellis Short.

 

“The vision is that with our passion, we have a chance of competing with the best,” he said. “In the first season after our last promotion we averaged a fantastic 44,000 and spent most of the season in the bottom three but managed to scrape out of the relegation places in the last few games – that struggle did not seem to bother us at the gate.

 

“I told Ellis that with a base of 44,000 we could build on that and take on the bigger boys – not with similar investment to the very biggest clubs but with raw passion and emotion. It adds a different component and makes us a big club. It’s what makes Sunderland special and difficult to beat.

 

“That was my vision, that’s what I put to Ellis and he bought into that. Our rise on the pitch has been steady and until our recent wobble we’ve spent much of the winter in the top six or seven but the gates, instead of improving with the team, have gone the other way, down to about 38,000 this season.

 

“That can’t continue. If it does, it may be the end of my vision. I’m not sure I could continue to ask the owner to underwrite that.”

 

What follows next for Quinn is a battle to win back those lost fans – not, he believes, lost as Sunderland followers but lost at the gate. Many have defected to illegal broadcasts of Sunderland home matches, shown in pubs, clubs and bars in the club’s heartland every Saturday afternoon – live – when they were populating the Stadium of Light’s stands in past years. How many? Quinn believes it could be a staggering 10,000 screen defectors for every home game.

 

“This is not anecdotal,” he assured me. “We’ve done our research. We’ve had Premier League observers investigate what’s going on. There is one typical town in our heartland which has around 50 pubs, clubs, cricket clubs, social clubs and other bars. They found 37 of those 50 were showing our games live, illegally. That’s just one town and I could name another 12 in our area where the same thing is happening.

 

“If just 30 people are watching in each bar – and that’s a conservative number – you see the scale of the problem.

 

“Those fans may be saving on a match ticket but they’re still turning up to have their fish and chips, beer or sandwiches. I don’t think all of them can’t afford to watch us.” Quinn is now going on the campaign trail again over the next four to six weeks. He will meet the stayaways and urge them to return to keep the “vision” alive.

 

“Ellis Short has kept his side of the bargain,” says Quinn. “I’m announcing that Ellis put in another £28million of his own money last season. And yet the crowds will have gone down a further 10 per cent.

 

“In these next four to six weeks I am going out into the heartland again. I am going to speak to our fans and I’ll get the message out there. There will be no holds barred. The future shape of the club depends on that. The fans in front of those illegal screens or at home watching illegal sites on their home computers perhaps do not understand how critical it is. If I don’t win them back, the club may have to downsize and cut its cloth differently. It’ll be difficult to follow up on the current investment and players may have to be sold.

 

“Manchester United have just announced turnover of £289m; ours is £64m. We can’t compete financially with that. Our missing 10,000 fans cost us £1.8m over the season so a figure like that won’t make the difference in allowing us to compete – it is those fans being inside the ground and making it a hostile place for visiting sides that makes the difference.

 

“When United came earlier in the season the ground was full and rocking and in the closing moments Sir Alex Ferguson was screaming for the referee to end it. He doesn’t normally do that...that’s the difference I’m talking about.

 

“What I want from our fans is their atmospheric input. That’s what makes the place special. If they don’t come back, we may not be the club I thought we were and could be. Me, finish as chairman? I don’t want to ask myself that question but it will mean events have not gone the way we want.”

 

Critics say Quinn underestimates the economic factors. Sunderland is feeling the recession more than most cities and is still coming to terms with the loss of massive industries.

 

“People have accused me of just wanting fans’ money in an area where it is just not affordable,” he admits. “That’s not my complaint. If any one of our fans tells me: ‘Look, I just can’t afford to watch you’, I can have no problem with that.

 

“But we do our level best to make Sunderland good value to watch. We’re right up there in the top places in the table but we are 18th in the league of season-ticket prices. Only two Premier clubs are cheaper to watch than us.

 

“Among the first reactions to what I said in the programme, a stayaway said we hadn’t repainted some parts of the stadium and the concourses were dreary – stuff like that.

 

“That’s not the Sunderland fans I know and love...the miners who stood up to Thatcher; the fans who follow us through thick and thin...staying away because the concourses may need a lick of paint? That’s a worry.

 

“Look, if we get 45,000 season-ticket holders for next season, I will get down on my knees and apologise to them all – but it will have been worth it to get them back in the fold.

 

“If we fail then I’ll do my best for our existing 30,000 season-ticket holders and our other 7-8,000 regulars – other than that, the club’s progress will have been stunted.”

 

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/229761...k#ixzz1EIavgSQP

 

Has agent Bridget whacked up the council tax or summat?

 

This stuff was in one of the local papers last weekend. Ellis getting second thoughts??? He must be.

[ChezGiven 0]

Ellis getting second thought? Er, he has just put £28m of his own money in. If he stays at Sunderland 10 years it will cost him quarter of a billion at that rate.

[ChezGiven 0]

We may have higher revenues but that means nothing if we have higher costs. Our wage bill was at £100m a few years back and people struggle to understand the situation we were in.

 

Its easier to understand if it helps you laugh at Sunderland tbf.

[Guest alex]

They bought the wrong NE club tbh.

[snakehips 0]

Ellis getting second thought? Er, he has just put £28m of his own money in. If he stays at Sunderland 10 years it will cost him quarter of a billion at that rate.

 

 

“Ellis Short has kept his side of the bargain,” says Quinn. “I’m announcing that Ellis put in another £28million of his own money last season. And yet the crowds will have gone down a further 10 per cent."

 

£28m LAST season, and the crowds are down further 10%. How much will he have to put in this season? How long will he be happy to put 20-30 m quid in year on year?? Nee fucker would be happy putting that in with no return.

[ewerk 31225]

The games are available in the pubs because of the Sky deal which contributes massively to their turnover - I think he should realise that before having a go.

 

I think his complaint was more about the people watching foreign broadcasts.

[OTF 7496]

Less than 4 years of that and they could have bought Newcastle. At Newcastle if they showed that ambition St James' would be full. We've got a comparable squad that'd be ahead of them with the 35m reinvested (ahead even with their bent money reinvested).

[ChezGiven 0]

He wont, thats what Quinn is basically telling everyone.

 

The reality is he wont be able to continue doing that anyway unless its just to keep Sunderland in the prem league. If he wasnt them to play in the Europa league he wont be able to underwrite those losses.

[NJS 4411]

The games are available in the pubs because of the Sky deal which contributes massively to their turnover - I think he should realise that before having a go.

 

I think his complaint was more about the people watching foreign broadcasts.

 

I know but without Sky those broadcasts wouldn't exist.

[Guest LeazesLad]

"Newcastle get 53,000 and they are a pretty big club. Everybody thinks they are far bigger than Sunderland but I know if this club goes right we will be bigger than Newcastle.

 

"That is what attaches to me to it. It is the potential, it is the people, it is their spirit."

 

I could've told him then in 2007 that his comments were making him look a bigger fool than David Icke. The future for Sunderland should be rosier than ours due to the investment and commitment, but it won't be, because of the basic fabric of the club. They are not half the size of Newcastle United in support, stature, or local and national appeal. When you factor in it's a shithole it's ridiculous comparing the clubs even. The true difference in the clubs was shown in those figures last week - gate receipts Sunderland £12m (Prem) Newcastle £31m (CCC) it's a gobsmacking difference. If Sunderland fans had to pay proper prices they'd be even smaller - probably akin to say a Birmingham City.

[JawD 99]

We could be fighting to stay in the CCC and they top 8 in the Prem and we'd still be perceived as a bigger club. It's everything that goes with it. the figures for gate receipts speak volumes to me.

[KeithJ 0]

Why try making Sunderland in to a big club when they just dont have the fan base and never will. The area isnt built to make it one of the big clubs. They will not get support from any Newcastle based supporters.

 

If he wanted to take a club and make it in to a super power with the fan base, then he bought the wrong club.

 

Jesus! Sunderland? Who are they?

 

I remember walking in the Disney World and seeing Newcastle United shirts on sale in the British Part of the Epcot centre because Americans knew us through Owen and Shearer. I doubt you would ever see that for Sunderland!

[manc-mag 1]

He was on Radio 4 over lunch about this. I don't dislike Quinn just because of his Mackem associations per se, but he does look like a bit of a mug with some of the deluded attendance projections he comes out with. Their gates have been up and down pretty wildly most years they've been in the Prem, so he needs to get it in that historical perspective. Mind you he more than makes up for this oversight in my eyes by going on to say that he despises some of SAFC's own fans.

 

Incidentally the point about their foundation giving away/discounting several thousand tickets per home game-apparently that programme supports 100 jobs or some such number. Astonishing.

[Monkeys Fist 43115]

He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

Really?

[NJS 4411]

He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

Really?

 

TBF - they did get full houses for the first couple of years under the Monkey's heed - it was only after the relegations bit that they dropped a bit.

 

That was in the initial "free ticket mackems" era though.

[Anorthernsoul 1221]

Laughable.

[NJS 4411]

I'd add that their real problem now is that they are getting under 40k with all the discounts and £19 STs

Edited February 18, 2011 by NJS

[Monkeys Fist 43115]

He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

Really?

 

TBF - they did get full houses for the first couple of years under the Monkey's heed - it was only after the relegations bit that they dropped a bit.

 

That was in the initial "free ticket mackems" era though.

Exactly.

Can't be arsed to look it up, but I'd swear they rarely if ever got capacity, even when they were doing 'well'.

[Howay 12496]

I hate Quinn, the deluded shite talking cunt makes some ok points but they're completely unwinnable ones. He's never going to attract people back by effectively calling them shit fans.

[Guest LeazesLad]

He arrived in Roker Park’s dying days and moved to the new Stadium of Light in 1997, fired by the passion of the crowd that filled their new 48,000-seater home to the rafters time and again.

 

Really?

 

TBF - they did get full houses for the first couple of years under the Monkey's heed - it was only after the relegations bit that they dropped a bit.

 

That was in the initial "free ticket mackems" era though.

Aye exactly. Headmasters in places like HEXHAM, BLYTH, BLAYDON, ASHINGTON, FUCKIN HAYDON BRIDGE (proper Sunderland heartlands), were getting letters - "right £50 bring the whole school doon" and that's how they filled 48,000. Newcastle have almost always had full houses for 18 year, paying top end prices (most expensive outside London).

[NJS 4411]

My view was that if they wanted to sell the idea of a community club, helping schoolkids and dole wallers see football then that's pretty laudible but you can't then turn round at the same time and brag about having full houses meaning they're supposedly great fans.