Why should Sunderland fans care about how much money Kyril Louis Dreyfus spends?

Football finance has become big business in recent years with large swathes of cash entering and exiting the game at an alarming rate. That raises the question: why should fans, care?

There is a balance to be had, it would seem, between ambition and sustainability. Ellis Short, you could argue, showed tremendous amounts of ambition at Sunderland before it all started to go wrong. The American signed the cheques away every month and the club became unsustainable. Once Short, pulled the plug, problems arose.

However, Short’s successors - Stewart Donald, Charlie Methven and Juan Sartori - became obsessed with cost-cutting and sustainability after purchasing the club leveraged against its own Premier League parachute payments. They took it too far, there wasn’t enough investment in the right areas in terms of structure and player acquisition and Sunderland languished in League One for four seasons. Madrox also sold many of the club’s most promising young talents at the time.

Donald and Methven departed, Sartori somewhat curiously stayed and along came Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, under whom Sunderland have invested. There is now a proper scouting department and a first-class data analysis team. The Black Cats have a sporting director and a head of recruitment alongside an academy manager. In terms of the modern footballing world, this is how you have to do it if you’re going to make it to the top.

Another key facet of football finance is, of course, buying players for money. It is what gets our juices well and truly flowing as fans and in the media. However, a curious argument seems to arise now and again when Sunderland are chasing a player.

Take Kieffer Moore in January 2024, for example. Michael Beale desperately needed reinforcements and Sunderland, at the time, were in with a shout of making the play-offs before it all went horrendously wrong. Ipswich Town ended up signing the Welshman and winning promotion to the Premier League as they were prepared to offer more money in wages.

Supporters were split into two camps. The first centred around the cash. The figure quoted to cover Moore’s wages were astronomical for a Championship club. Many fans argued that at that price, they weren’t keen on the deal. The second camp thought that it wasn’t their money, so why should they be bothered? It made for some interesting social media interactions, let me tell you.

However, the debate is an interesting one. Should fans, ultimately, be bothered about how much Sunderland’s French billionaire owner spends on transfer fees? Especially when it isn’t our money he is spending to a large degree, though many fans would rightly argue their spending across a lifetime entitles them to a say. The Echo caught up with football finance expert and university academic Kieran Maguire for his take.

Should Sunderland fans care about what the owner does?

“Spending other people's money is quite painless, isn't it? If I think about where football finance was. I've been involved in it now for quite some time, it used to be a non-subject. Now, rightly or wrongly, and a large part of me says wrongly, even though I've benefited personally in terms of my career, it is something which fans take interest in,” Maguire told The Echo.

“It is something which the media take interest in, partly due to the fact that we're dealing with an extra couple of zeros in terms of the numbers, which means that there's no way 10 years ago or 20 years ago private equity or hedge funds would be interested in football, but now it's seen as an opportunity to invest and make money.

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“We've got new people coming into the game. We've got celebrity and notoriety being associated with football finance. Outside of our immediate family, your football club is extended family and therefore, I think as far as the finance is concerned, you want the knowledge that you'll be able to hand over the love that you have to your kids and your grandkids, but there are people out there that will gamble with the future of your club and therefore having the knowledge of the finances and an awareness of this isn't sustainable.

“I know sustainable is a bit of a word which generates a mixed response because there's another club in the northeast called Newcastle United. They had an owner called Mike Ashley who operated a very sustainable financial regime, and it created misery amongst the fans because we don't want sustainability.

“We want glamour. We want glory. We want to be bestowed upon with expensive trinkets in the form of football players and that is not part of a sensible financial regime, and trying to tread the right path in terms of being ambitious and being prudent and sensible is genuinely tough.”