Sunderland pour scorn on De Fanti’s cost-cutting claims

Sunderland’s chief executive, Margaret Byrne, has poured scorn on suggestions from Roberto De Fanti, the club’s former director of football, that he was forced to implement savage cost-cutting measures.


“Roberto had only one remit at Sunderland – to improve the team,” said Byrne. “To claim his job was to reduce salaries, spend as little as possible and sell our best players is a complete fabrication. He was fully supported financially by the chairman [Ellis Short] but ultimately he oversaw player recruitment.”

In an interview with the Guardian on Tuesday, De Fanti attempted to defend his ostensibly disastrous record at the Stadium of Light during a turbulent seven-month tenure stretching from June 2013 to January 2014.

The former agent spent £30m on players, signing 13 during the summer of 2013. Only two of his recruits, Emanuele Giaccherini and Vito Mannone, remain part of the first-team squad. Another three are on loan and the rest have been offloaded.

De Fanti argued he was working with his hands tied behind his back, despite presiding over a particularly depressing chapter in Sunderland’s history in which the team failed to move out of the Premier League’s relegation zone.

“My job was to reduce the salaries,” said De Fanti, who advised Short to hire Paolo Di Canio – swiftly replaced by Gus Poyet, the chairman’s choice – as head coach. “To spend as little as possible, sell the two best players, Simon Mignolet and Stéphane Sessègnon. The job was economics, to change the contract system, take away the guaranteed loyalties, lower the wages, introduce performance bonuses.”

Senior club sources are adamant De Fanti was never given a remit to reduce remuneration costs and feel he has rewritten history. They point out that this supposed slash and burn policy not only incorporated a £30m spend – £12m net – on players but involved the wage bill “increasing significantly” on his watch.

“Roberto was never told ‘no’ to any player for financial reasons,” said a source. The board, quite apart from having no recollection of instructing him to sell before buying, is understood to have frequently urged De Fanti to negotiate contract extensions with three key first-teamers, Jack Colback, Phil Bardsley and Sebastian Larsson.

With none of that trio feeling wanted by De Fanti at the time, such deals failed to materialise before his departure. Although Larsson has signed a new agreement and remains a key part of Poyet’s team, Colback was allowed to run his contract down before departing for Newcastle United on a free transfer last summer, when Bardsley joined Stoke City. Both have been badly missed.

Despite such teething troubles with the club’s first director of football, Short and Byrne continue to believe in the system and are encouraged by Lee Congerton’s impressive adaptation to a role he assumed last spring. Congerton, a former chief scout at Chelsea and technical director at Hamburg, is said to have brought much more structure to a role which, by devolving recruitment responsibilities, leaves the head coach free to concentrate on coaching.

De Fanti has returned to work as an agent and recently assisted Francesco Becchetti’s takeover at Leyton Orient as well as helping broker Esteban Cambiasso’s transfer to Leicester.

Although Giaccherini and Mannone have their admirers and Ki Sung-yueng and Fabio Borini impressed during loan stints on Wearside last season, De Fanti’s time at Sunderland seems set to be forever synonymous with some major flops, most notably the £6.5m striker Jozy Altidore and the rarely sighted midfielder Cabral.


By Louise Taylor, Guardian