Black Cat only wants the cream

TODAY Ireland, tomorrow the world. Sunderland’s attempt to crack the Irish market begins with the first of three friendlies against Bohemians on Saturday, but the Republic is just the first step in a campaign to establish the club as a player on the global market, according to Niall Quinn.

Other Premiership sides like Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton have travelled to Asia and the United States in an attempt to earn their slice of the corporate dollar and Quinn has similar plans for Sunderland.

The Premiership will be shown live in 207 countries next season and, though Sunderland can count on a passionate 49,000 home crowd, their chairman believes they must develop a fan base far beyond the 20-mile radius of the city.

“We are either going to remain small and in the shadows of that or stick our chests out and see how we can do,” Quinn said in Dublin yesterday. “Ireland is very important to that.”

“This is our test case to see if the club can work in another country. I don’t mean just revenue. I mean supported, thought of as a good club, a good media presence and doing things the right way.

“I want people in Cork, Galway and Dublin after they have been to a match, or one of the marquees on the history of the club, to come away saying ‘Jaysus, don’t those boys do all that well?’ If we keep doing that I’ll try to do it in Scandinavia and wherever.”

Quinn believes that small clubs will be gradually squeezed out of the picture in the years to come. It is that fear, he believes, which is feeding the ever-inflating transfer market in which he and Roy Keane are attempting to operate.

Quinn is adamant that Sunderland won’t be one of the outfits shelling out millions on journeyman pros. All the players signed by Keane so far this summer fit the manager’s template of young players whose careers are on the up. Another common theme is they all hail from Ireland and Britain.

“That’s not exclusive,” said Quinn. “There might be a player from abroad who fits the bill. This is Roy’s department but we’re putting the structures into Europe to see it our way and not the way of the agents, because they are having an absolute beano at the moment.

“They’re like estate agents that own half the property or, in West Ham’s case, it looks like all the property. The market will sort itself out. It always does but we won’t go out and buy players who don’t deserve to wear the Sunderland shirt.”

Quinn uses former player Kevin Ball as an example of the player the Sunderland fans want to see at the Stadium of Light. Club player of the year for seven seasons, he was unheralded outside of Wearside, but adored in it.

The no-nonsense approach is one they admire and, in Keane, they have the market leader. Quinn points to the episode when Keane ordered the team bus to depart minus latecomers Anthony Stokes, Toby Hysen and Marton Fulop as one that crystallised the fans’ faith in the new regime.

“Before players used to drive up in their Ferraris and if they won or lost on a Saturday it was a case of ‘ah well’,” said Quinn, who believes Keane could well eclipse his glittering playing career with his achievements in the dugout.

“Roy raises the standard for everybody, be it the PR people, the players, his coaches, even me. Everything has to be right. Those are the standards we have now.

“There’s no obstacles in front of him now. There would have been when he was a player and that was frustrating. He has everybody lifting the bar. Roy can be as good a manager as he was a player.”

Every journey starts with a single step and first on the agenda is negotiating their return to the Premiership with enough success to have a second stab at it and then a third and so on.

But don’t ask the chairman to make any predictions for the campaign to come. “Francis Lee took over Man City when I was a player and I scratched my head when he stood up on a soapbox and told everybody they were going to be bigger than Man United in three years.

“The first mental note I took there, was that if I ever took over a football club, that was the last thing I would say. That was the rock he perished on. Two years later they were two divisions lower. Predictions are bulls**t.

“What’s important to me is the bank manager saying at the end of the year ‘well done, you have another year in the Premiership’ and see the TV money coming in.

“I know Roy Keane doesn’t talk about predictions but if you caught him at a weak moment and said he could finish one place above (relegation) I know he wouldn’t be happy. That’s the nature of the guy.”