Where to start, a week on from the tumultuous play-offs weekend of the EFL? Probably the most professionally satisfying weekend of my career. Not because I was there lifting trophies - I was not, being here in Jamaica watching on the TV - but because promises had been kept; plans had come good.
When I met with Ellis Short in April 2018 prior to taking the club over a few weeks later, it is hard to overstate just how broken Sunderland AFC was. £180 million in debt (much of it to aggressive money-lenders at exorbitant interest rates), and losing £27 million per annum on an operational basis, the club had just finished bottom of the Championship, four points behind Burton Albion. The average crowd that season at the SoL had been a paltry (by SAFC standards) 27,000. We inherited players on multi-season multi-million £ contracts who were quite open about not wanting to play for the club (indeed, several failed to report for pre-season training)
Now is not the time to recount the whole rollercoaster ride (losing twice in the play-offs and making a notorious failed signing!) but certain recollections merit re-visiting, as seminal moments in the re-birth.
Sat alongside Stewart Donald at a Wearside desk, with our red pens systematically chopping out the waste that had brought the club low; Luke O'Nien driving up from L2 Wycombe Wanderers, with his worldly possessions packed in the back of his battered old VW; interviewing (Sporting Director) Kristjaan Speakman on Zoom during the pandemic and seeing his IQ as something rarely encountered in football; being told not to let (head of recruitment) Stuart Harvey get into his car without signing him up, after his interview; travelling to the Italian Lakes in late 2020 to persuade Kyril Dreyfus that he was the guy that could take the club to the next level. From the co-owners to the Sporting Director, the head of recruitment and the club captain, Stewart and I brought them all to the club, believing that they could continue and complete what we had started. Seven years from disaster and possible extinction back to the Promised Land is not bad going, though it is a year or two more than I originally predicted!
Charlton was a different kettle of fish. Much of the club was healthy (not least its Academy and Community Trust), and its fanbase resilient.
However, the business operation and the First Team environment were muddled. The culture (unlike SAFC's) was not toxic but weak. Learning from Sunderland, where we were slow to get the executive team right, strong appointments were made early. In amidst all the deserved praise for others this week, a word for Andy Scott, who left the club in January, but who signed Kayne Ramsay, Thierry Small, Conor Coventry, Greg Docherty, Macualey Gillesphey and Matt Godden for a combined £450,000. Nathan Jones was always Andy's first choice manager, but we eventually got him in Jan '24... and the rest is history. A hugely gratifying 2 year turnaround for a club I'll always love.
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