The stigma of the term 'selling club' and how Sunderland hope to redefine it

'We are hearing ‘selling,’ but the club are saying ‘succession.’

Being a football is not easy. Well, if you’re a proper football fan anyway. We can all sit in our armchairs watching Super Sunday, playing FIFA, pick whatever teams wins a lot and claim to be a ‘fan.’ That, though, is not for us.

Being a Sunderland fan is even harder still and, again, no one reading this will need the reasons for that spelled out. It just is. A lot of it, though, is that you just don’t know what to expect most of the time. The rest of it is that you know exactly what to expect, and whatever it is it won’t be very good.

This week, the Sunderland owners and directors spoke to fans at a Red and White Army talk-in and we learned an awful lot about what we actually can expect moving forward. It was the kind of transparency that we have wanted for years, and you have to commend the club for it.

If you haven’t read a round-up of the key points that were raised, then feel free to catch up here.

Of course, the problem with transparency is that not everyone is going to like the answers, and one has set off alarm bells among the supporter base more than most: the admission from Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Kritsjaan Speakman and David Jones that Sunderland are very much a selling club nowadays.

“Every club in the world sells players in some shape or form,” Speakman said, with Jones adding: “I don’t think it’s time [to sell star players] just yet. But that time is fast approaching.”

In truth, and I say this as a someone who has supported Sunderland from, at first at least, the terraces for 35 years now, it’s a very unsettling thing to hear. That is my first instinct on it, anyway.

The reason for that is, simply put, the connotations attached to being ‘a selling club’ are not those I want associated with Sunderland. ‘Selling clubs’ are small clubs, they are unambitious clubs. What’s more, ‘selling clubs’ are the weak and cowardly clubs.

At least that’s the perception, but maybe it’s time we reassessed that. Maybe that is a fault of interpretation rather than one of expression.

For people my age, my formative years loving football were spent watching Manchester United winning. Under Sir Alex Ferguson they won the lot, and they just kept on winning. They were also very much a ‘selling club.’

Man Utd sold David Beckham at his peak, and Cristiano Ronaldo before his. They sold Jaap Stam when he was probably the best central defender in the world. One summer they sold Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis and Mark Hughes all at once. It never stopped them winning. In fact, it undoubtedly helped them.

"United's strategy was like a very slow conveyor belt,” Gary Neville once explained. “A few would come in, and a few would leave. Never more than a handful each season, never a massive adaptation of the squad.

"It was controlled, with six or seven young players, 10 in the middle, and three or four that were in their 30s. Every club that has had a dynasty has had that stability of players."

In that sense, it is easy to see how selling players can help to not only build success but prolong it too – if it’s done right.

“Strategically we’re trying to build the squad over three or four transfer windows,” Speakman said at the Red and White Army event. “We’re trying to build year on year. That’s why we’ve got so many young players and a few old players. We’re trying to maintain that balance.”

I suppose, in real terms, what they are trying to build is a system of natural and progressive succession. Dan Ballard learns from Danny Batth and then succeeds him. Aji Alese steps in when Batth leaves and learns from Ballard, who is eventually sold with Alese becoming the senior centre back and another youngster, who might be better than the lot of them, emerges to learn from him – and so on.

“You have to sell players to convince players to come to you,” David Jones explained and he’s right. If you don’t sell players, why would ambitious players join? I don’t think anyone is still clinging onto the notion of loyalty in football anymore. Players want a path to the elite clubs and biggest paydays and that’s just about all they want.

In the same fashion, the most talented youngsters are unlikely to sign for a club who can’t convince them there is a path for them into the first team. Selling players creates that path and makes a club far more tempting to join.

That, of course, will be Sunderland’s challenge here. We are hearing ‘selling,’ but the club are saying ‘succession.’

It’s easy to say it, though, isn’t it? Doing it is doing to be a hell of a lot harder, and it’s the bit that Sunderland have always let us down on before. I think we are a long way past the point when any Sunderland fan can criticise another for scepticism when it comes to how the club is run and how capable they are of delivering what they intend.

Nevertheless, it’s abundantly clear that there is a plan in place at Sunderland and, whether we like the plan or not, it’s not going to change any time soon. Again, whether that’s a good thing probably depends upon whether or not you agree that the plan is a good one.

Either way, I don’t think we can fear the ‘selling club’ moniker. Selling appears to be just one part of an ambitious plan, not the entirety of a defeatist one. Let’s just hope it’s a plan upon which they can deliver.