Source: Daily_Mail
NORTHERN EXPOSURE: Quinn's vision guides Black Cats clear of choppy water
Rewind six years. As some of his team-mates marked Sunderland's relegation by splashing out on a Ferrari and a flashy new watch which was nearly the same price, Niall Quinn was sharing a city's pain.
And the image of grown men and women leaving his club in tears, their lives in tatters and careers in football at a dead-end, has never left him. Just ask the current bunch of players now under his watchful eye as Sunderland chairman.
When he took control of the club three years ago, Quinn was more concerned - and hopeful - that he would be paying out promotion bonuses among the many players signed before the August deadline by Roy Keane. But even then he had insisted on relegation clauses for any new recruits who did make the Barclays Premier League.
It may seem overly pessimistic for a club with serious aspirations about being back in the top half of the Premier League and challenging for the European place which has now evaded them for 26 years, but Quinn is a Sunderland fan and a realist. It comes with the territory.
Now under the stewardship of American Ellis Short, Quinn believes he has fittingly found a new description for Sunderland. `We're not a yo-yo club anymore, we're a yo club!' he said. `We're about to start our third year in a row in this division, so one of the yos has gone. We just need to get rid of the other yo now.'
That didn't stop him putting contracts in place which would ensure his players took the brunt of the pain if Sunderland had been relegated last month. Staff who were not to blame for the inadequacies on the field knew their jobs were safe because the chairman had said so. The players would now be looking forward to substantial pay cuts if results had gone Newcastle's way on the final day.
Sunderland, as if anyone up here needed reminding, are the North East's sole Premier League side now.
By contrast, Newcastle are preparing to pay almost £300,000 to Michael Owen and Mark Viduka as a final farewell gift. Meanwhile, good, honest people in the offices, some of them true Newcastle fans who have been dedicated to the club for years, are still looking for new jobs after they were dismissed last month.
Quinn would have it no other way at his club. He said: `We had it planned for quite while that relegation would be put more on the players than the staff here. It wouldn't have been a knee-jerk reaction to do that.
`The players' salaries would have been trimmed, not the staff and we had a survival plan in place. Truth be known, it was in place the first year we went up. Wages have changed and things have moved on since then. The overall scheme of things was that we would have certainly been okay while the parachute money was there, to try and get back up.
`I remember what happened when so many members of staff lost their jobs and that was the cruelest thing of all, seeing so many of the non football staff pack their bags and have to go. That hurt the very epicentre of the club.
`You don't feel so sorry for the player who has to go and drive his Ferrari out of the gates. We were determined we would have that plan in place. We harp on about it, but we've got around 80 people employed in the Sunderland AFC Foundation. That's vital.
`We try very hard when it comes to relegation clauses. You don't sign contracts with players on the same day every year. You do them over different over a sporadic period, but we've probably got to the stage where we're 90 per cent there.
`For new players now, we would insist on it. And that would tell you what their intentions are across the table, too. I was probably guilty as a player - I didn't understand the mechanics behind the scenes of a football club. You would go in looking for your deal and all the rest of it.
`I'm not trying to put them in a weakened position, but there should be some consideration given to 'yes, I'm going to give you all this money, but if you fail, next year I can't'. It's as simple as that and even if it cost us a signing I would stick with that, definitely. In the modern world, at a club like ours, yes.
`A top four club needn't have it. Man City maybe needn't have it, but because of where we are in our journey, we have to be smart.'
Being smart comes naturally to the impressive Sunderland chairman, who must be surprised at his own dedication to the club he joined in 1996 and was unable to save from relegation thanks to a knee injury which almost ended his career - and would have denied him a place at the 2002 World Cup finals.
He was talking last week at the launch of Sunderland's bid for city host status as part of the FA's 2018 World Cup campaign. Quinn is happy being the public face as Sunderland aim to really put itself on the English football map. He was keen to emphasise he wants to emerge from the 15 candidates alongside Newcastle and Gateshead, and not instead of their neighbours, whose joint bid was launched this week, without the fanfare.
And, of course, he did what he does best and spoke emotionally about the impact Sunderland Football Club, its supporters and the whole region have had on him and his family. His involvement has stretched way beyond anything they could all have envisaged when Peter Reid signed him 13 years ago. But, when he arrived, and then started banging in goals and setting them up for Kevin Phillips, the place just got under his skin.
And he would love nothing more than seeing Sunderland at the forefront of a World Cup in England and showing off the unexpected treasures which lurk around the city and among its notoriously football-daft people. And he draws inspiration from his own Irish adventures in Italy, the United States, Japan and South Korea.
`Japan was probably the pick of them. I remember everyday at training the people would welcome us and applaud us on to the training pitch and then they would have a reception party as we came off, with dragon dancing, the lot.
`They just wanted to show off their culture and were so proud of it and the more mature among us could really appreciate what it was all about. I would love to see the people here showing off Sunderland and their culture and people from Brazil or France saying `wow' like we did.'
The FA will visit the rival cities in the next two months and the outcome for Sunderland will not depend on their future Premier League status. But it will help for the moment. Steve Bruce stepped in to his office this week and while he will spend the first few days of pre-season training making quick but considered and ultimately crucial decisions on the players he has inherited, the new boss already has his eyes on targets.
It is a list which includes the likes of Peter Crouch and Eidur Gudjohnsen, who both exceed Sunderland's wage bill. Peter Reid and Mick McCarthy had lists, but could never attract their top targets, but that all changed under Quinn, as his backing for Keane proved.
The bond with Bruce is certain to be stronger, and Sunderland can only benefit from the relationship between two real football men, still fresh from playing and witnessing at first hand the positive and negative changes to our game. Together, they want to run a club the way they passionately believe it should be run. Quinn's aims are as realistic as any Sunderland fan will allow.
He said: `Staying in the Premier League gives everybody a massive lift and you only have to imagine how bad it could have been to realise how it important it is. If we could kick that on and have a comfortable year in the Premier League - and by that I mean understanding from a very early stage that we weren't going to get relegated - you'd then see what this club was capable of.
`Are we going to get full houses every week, do we need to kick on? That has to be the aim and it's a reasonable aim. It's not a stupid aim. There's no point talking about finishing in the top four at the moment. It's nonsense. It's just so, so hard to talk like that. You've got to gradually, gradually have achievable aims and our next achievable aim is to become a comfortable Premier League club.'
