Ellis Short has been a catastrophic owner of Sunderland. He has presided over a compendium of awful decisions, veered from one botched, semi-literate plan to another, handed money and power to people who deserved neither, made staying in the Premier League the only guiding principle of a club who once stood for community and taken a wrecking ball to hope. They are where they are, down among the dead men, directly because of their owner’s negligence.

Back in 2009, Short laid out his vision. “What we want to do is take this good club and continue to improve it,” the Irish-American businessman said. “We’ll do what we need to do this summer to get this team into a place where we can try to finish