Niall Quinn plans for success and failure
Jun 30 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal
That journey, according to Quinn, is about to embark on an exciting new stage with Bruce behind the wheel, but the Irishman will always make sure the club is being run properly as he can still remember how many people suffered the last time Sunderland’s players failed to keep the club in the Premier League.
He explained: “We had it planned for quite a while that relegation would be put more on the players than the staff here. It wouldn’t have been a knee-jerk reaction to do that.
“The players’ salaries would have been trimmed, not the staff and we had a survival plan in place.
“I remember what happened when so many members of staff lost their jobs here and that was the cruellest thing of all, seeing so many of the non-football staff pack their bags and have to go.
“That hurt the very epicentre of the club. You don’t feel so sorry for the player who has to go and drive his Ferrari out of the gates. We were determined we would have that plan in place.”
Nevertheless, Quinn is not expecting to see any repeat of the relegation battles which have caused so much stress and strain at the club over the last two years.
“Staying in the division gives everybody a massive lift and you only have to imagine how bad it could have been to realise how it important it is,” he added.
“If we could kick that on and have a comfortable year in the Premier League – and by that I mean understanding from a very early stage that we weren’t going to get relegated – you’d then see what this club was capable of.
“Are we going to get full houses every week, do we need to kick on? That has to be the aim and it’s a reasonable aim. It’s not a stupid aim. There’s no point talking about finishing in the top four at the moment. It’s nonsense. It’s just so, so hard to talk like that.
“You’ve got to gradually have achievable aims and our next achievable aim is to become a comfortable Premier League club.
“We’re about to start our third year in a row in this division, so one of the yos have gone – we’re not a yo-yo club anymore, we’re a yo club! We just need to get rid of the other yo now.”
