Cats survival down to new owner Ellis Short

May 31 2009 by James Hunter, Sunday Sun

Ellis Short

SUNDERLAND owe their Premier League status to new owner Ellis Short, according to Louis Fitzgerald of the departing Drumaville consortium.

The Black Cats stayed up on the final day of the season and an announcement was made this week that US billionaire Short - who was already the club’s majority shareholder - has agreed to buy the remaining 70 per cent of Drumaville’s holding.

Short bought his initial 30% stake last summer and immediately put his hand in his pocket to bankroll the £8m signing of Anton Ferdinand and £4.5m capture of George McCartney at the end of the August transfer window - signings which Fitzgerald believes helped keep the club in the top flight.

Fitzgerald said: “We were looking for new investors and our chairman Niall Quinn brought Ellis on board in August.

“He put money in at that stage at a time when possibly some of the members of Drumaville would have preferred not to.

“And if no money had been put in, there is every chance the club would have struggled and might have gone back down into the Championship.

“It was a wise decision for him to come in and invest at that point and I think it ultimately helped keep us up.”

The eight-strong Ireland-based Drumaville consortium are selling up three years after they bought the club from Bob Murray, when it had just been relegated from the Premier League to the Championship.

And Fitzgerald, who owns a hotel and pub group in Ireland, revealed that it was always the consortium’s plan to hand the baton on at this point.

“Right at the outset, the consortium agreed that we would keep the club for three years - we all agreed on that,” he said.

“There were a few - myself included - who would have preferred to stay on, but we are a loyal bunch and we stuck to our original agreement.

“So in the middle of last year, we started to think about exiting and so Niall and others discreetly went looking for a potential purchaser for the club.