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Ellis Short has promised his "total support" to Sunderland manager Gus Poyet as relegation to the Championship looms.
With seven games left last season, Martin O'Neill found himself out of a job as the American desperately searched for a way to avoid the drop, but it appears unlikely that history will repeat itself this time around.
Poyet told reporters:
The message from the owner is support. Total support. I spoke to him this week and he totally supports. He made a decision and he is standing by it until the end.
The conversation was very natural, I don't need to tell you what we said to each other, but it was natural and straight-forward. We spoke about the situation and why we decided to stick together until the end.
It's music to my ears, really. Yeah, so Poyet has made a few mistakes here and there over the last month or so. It happens. But it's time that we stopped defining a manager by their mistakes and started defining them by their possibilities.
With Poyet, you get a manager who has delivered an attractive style of football elsewhere. He's a manager who knows the Championship. He's a manager who took us to Wembley. He's a manager, I believe, who can re-energise this club. He is a manager who can instil an identity into the Sunderland side.
Moreover, though, it's time that Sunderland committed to a manager and committed to a path. I'm almost beyond caring what that path is now really. Let's just back ourselves, our decisions, and have a right good go over a period of time. It offers no guarantees, but it has to be better than constant dice-rolling, right?
