Crass, insensitive, baffling - Sunderland hierarchy need to rebuild trust after shocking Stadium of Light move

The signs have come down now but the images won't be easily forgotten.

You think you've just about seen it all in football and then there you have it: A Newcastle United bar in Sunderland's Stadium of Light.

Perhaps the game itself will still somehow end in a shock Sunderland victory but whatever happens on the pitch, the game has proved to be a defeat for the club's ownership.

In a short statement released on the club website at teatime, they apologised for a 'serious error in judgement' and said that they had requested an 'immediate review' of what had happened. Sunderland fans will ensure that the matter does not end there, and nor should it. 

It is up to the ownership now to show that they genuinely understand how much this damaged their standing in the eyes of supporters, who have been left with the understandable belief that they are entirely out of touch with the sentiment on Wearside. 

While most would acknowledge that a game of this magnitude taking place at relatively short notice was bound to bring with it significant operational challenges, the end result is a fanbase that feels deflated even before kick off. 

There had been real consternation with the decision to move fans out of their seats in the home stands to accommodate the Newcastle United supporters to begin with, though that came with the caveat that the specifics of the FA Cup ticket allocation rules had posed a problem. Rightly, the club were criticised by leading fan group the Red & White Army for not undergoing any consultation on the matter, though they did in time explain some of the operational reasons for the decision. There have also been logistical issues with the ticketing, with an apology on behalf of ticketmaster issued last week after many fans were left struggling to secure seats as a result of a scheduling error. All of this as the fanbase as a whole continues to express frustration with much of the club's off-field operation.

This latest move has yielded an almost entirely united front of fury - with even those who have sympathised with the challenges around some of the other controversial matters have been left trying to pick up their jaw from the floor. The sight of Sunderland slogans plastered over with those of the club's fiercest rivals is objectively fairly amusing from a Newcastle perspective but given the sensitivities the logistics of this game had already thrown up, it feels like a direct insult to Sunderland supporters from their own club. Crass, insensitive, baffling. Perhaps that initial emotion will fade a touch in the days and weeks and months ahead, but only to an extent. Kyril Louis-Dreyfus had been sat in the front row of the director's box when supporters in the North Stand and the Roker End raised banners at the start of the Coventry City defeat expressing their displeasure with decisions taken around ticketing for the game, and so there should not have been any surprise about the intensity of emotions both around the fixture and how it is handled.

While it appears from the club statement that the specifics of the bar decoration were not signed off by the club's ownership, it has to be said that this was a fairly significant risk when selling a lucrative hospitality package for the game - a decision in itself that is still yet to be explained. Most would have entirely understood the desire to take down Sunderland branding or even to neutralise the surroundings in designated away areas - emotions will run high ahead of the first derby in eight years. This, though, feels entirely different given the financial upside the Black Cats Bar offering will represent on the day. 

It has been woefully handled regardless of who is to blame, and leaves the club's ownership needing to build significant bridges in the weeks ahead. Today is undoubtedly the lowest moment since it was revealed Louis-Dreyfus did not in fact hold a majority shareholding, as he now does, a year into his tenure. Though undoubted on-field progress has significantly improved their standing since then, this will undo much of that trust.

It is supposed to be a day of restating pride in city and club, regardless of the result. Most Sunderland supporters feel proud of the young team their ownership have built, and were ready to stick their chest out and show it to the world even if the reality of the game and the current position of the two clubs would always offer some trepidation. Instead, they head into it wondering if the ownership really understands what this all means, and where they stand in the list of priorities. That is going to take a lot more work to recover.