Stability at Arsenal's heart, chaos blights Black Cats

Football is sometimes seen as Hollywood with boots on the feet and shorts on the backside. Job security is the first casualty of not giving the audience what they want.

However, the English Premier League (EPL) table at the start of this weekend told another story. At the top was Arsenal, at the bottom Sunderland.

Stan Kroenke, the American billionaire who owns the majority of Arsenal shares, gave a rare endorsement to his club manager when he said that as soon as Arsene Wenger is ready to sign a new contract, the terms and conditions will not get in the way.

Wenger will start his 17th calendar year at Arsenal tomorrow. In that time he has changed the philosophy of the way the team plays, and to a huge degree the way that football is played in England. He has managed the transition, and the cost, of the club's move from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium.

He has failed, by his own high standards, to win anything in eight seasons. But he has maintained the fluency, beauty, passing and vivacity of style - and crucially the longest unbroken run of qualifying for the £50 million (S$101 million) per season Champions League.

In football, in high finance, and in sustainability, monsieur Wenger is one of a kind now that Alex Ferguson has retired.

Sunderland are something else.

Their owner, Ellis Short is also American and also a billionaire.

But whereas Kroenke is an entrepreneur steeped in running American sports, Short made his pile in the equity markets, and was involved in the controversial takeover of Seoul's Korea Exchange Bank.

Money, of course, has a big stake in football, particularly at EPL level.

Foreign exchange seems almost a pre-requisite, unless you are Everton which, somewhat against the tide, manage year on year to challenge in the top half of the billionaires' league - without a billionaire on board.

Swansea, right now, are making a darned good effort of staying up, and playing decent football, through the judicious efforts of a board which was saved by local businessmen and fans.

The rise of the Swans is synonymous with picking bright young coaches on the way up, and backing their judgment. Roberto Martinez (now Everton) was followed by Brendan Rodgers (now Liverpool) and now Michael Laudrup (a future Barcelona or Real Madrid coach or, when Wenger calls time on himself, perhaps even Arsenal).

Where does this fit the Sunderland story?

In the five years since Short began buying into Sunderland, the club has dispensed with five managers - or head coaches as they now become, under a system whereby director of football Roberto de Fanti is responsible for player recruitment.

De Fanti, a former player-agent in Italy, works together with football scout Valentino Angeloni.

The Italian job seemed complete in March when Sunderland sacked Martin O'Neill and hired Paolo di Canio, together of course with his all-Italian backroom staff of assistant coaches, fitness trainer and the like.

Sunderland's move then was made in a panic. Short feared that O'Neill, his appointee, was losing the dressing room, and was too passive to shake up players who seemed to be drifting towards relegation.

If Sunderland were aware that di Canio's former chairman at Swindon described his methods as "management by hand grenade", maybe that was what Short and his advisers felt was necessary.

And maybe it worked, in the short term.

Sunderland escaped the drop by the skin of their teeth, and the summer sales and signings went into overdrive. Somebody, maybe not di Canio, spent £19 million on bringing in 14 players and shedding 16.

They were then put to work under di Canio's "hand grenade" management.

His intensity makes him a human Mount Vesuvius, burning with desire, brooding, demanding, holistic, intolerant and unstable.

Maybe all managers have something of that in them. Remember Ferguson's "hair -dryer" (which incidentally passed onto another short-hire Sunderland manager, Roy Keane)?

Why, even Wenger was prone to dark moods, and came into this season as low on optimism as anyone can remember.

But with Wenger, you get experience.

Creativity always rises above negativity with him. Give him £42 million to spend on Mesut Oezil, rather than selling Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri and Robin van Persie, and even if his squad is perilously thin, he points his team towards the top.

Kroenke evidently trusts in Arsene, Short has not found that trust yet. The annual, sometimes more than that, appointments reflect instability from the top.

The grapevine names Gus Poyet, fired by Brighton, as front runner to replace di Canio. One of Ferguson's former coaches, Rene Meulensteen, has talked with Sunderland - and the unemployed Roberto di Matteo, Alex McLeish and Tony Pulis line up.

Sunderland's former manager, and briefly chairman, Niall Quinn, said the day di Canio was fired: "It's a quick decision, some would say too quick. "It was a very brave decision to appoint him. They got what they wanted out of him, and now they've made a brave decision to go. I think I would probably have tried to give people as much time as possible."

Note the probably.

Sunderland face Liverpool at the Stadium of Light today. Luis Suarez is back in Liverpool's attack after his 10-match ban for biting and Kevin Ball is temporarily in di Canio's seat.

Ball was a tenacious ball-winner in the Sunderland shirt a decade ago. He has stayed loyal, coaching the youth squads and unafraid, he says, to put his name in the frame.

"Anybody would love to manage a football club of this stature," Ball says. "I'm 48, and I've dealt with lots of issues over the years. I know how to structure training, and if there's one or two things that I want to adjust, then that's my prerogative."

He must know the powder keg di Canio left behind. The pin is back in the grenade, but Ball is careful not to take sides between the players, the board and the eccentric former coach. "I've always said to players - just give me 100 per cent of what you can do," Ball says. "The biggest thing is pushing yourself, then hopefully the game comes easier.

They know what they need to do - they don't need me as a coach telling them that."

With this ownership, if you win you might get hired on a whim. The club earn their name "The Black Cats".

stsports@sph.com.sg

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