Sunderland takeover: Black Cats curse broken as Ellis Short serves up £140m slice of luck

At 12:51pm on Sunday, Sunderland AFC was once again the epicentre of chaos.

Chris Coleman was released from his duties as the Black Cats' boss and fans were left staring League One in the face with an absent owner, without a manager, without a hope.

The Welshman took a mighty gamble after leaving his national side for a challenge, and though it must be stressed he was not universally adored by Sunderland fans, the overwhelming majority greeted the decision with fury and bemusement – emotions all-too-common on Wearside in recent times.

Coleman spent his five-month reign incubating the club's promising crop of youngsters and whatever shreds of pride were still left within the walls of the Stadium of Light.

Countless others – from board-level to the playing field – have treated the club as a doormat, Coleman treated it as his home. He was desperate to be 'the man' and knuckled down to work on the club with a respect that few have harboured before him.

Chief Executive Martin Bain is the man behind day-to-day running of the club, a firefighter called in to tackle the inferno whipping around Sunderland, but in fans' eyes he has served no other purpose than to extinguish all embers of hope.

He remains at the club, though it is unclear for how long.

Ultimately, both men were puppets entangled in the strings of owner and chairman, Ellis Short.

The Texan billionaire's arrival in 2008 came within a month of Sheikh Mansour's acquisition of Manchester City and the fortunes of both clubs couldn't have been launched in more opposite directions ever since.

He has overseen the dismantling of a once-great club with a stunning lack of awareness, nous and knowledge.

Sunderland fans have cursed their luck throughout his reign. They had reeled in a billionaire owner whose empire specialised in steering distressed assets into calmer waters, but all he could accomplish was slamming the Black Cats into the rocks.

The script of their descent from an established yet scrappy Premier League team to a League One outfit was penned entirely by Short, his failure to surround himself with 'football people', a woeful grasp on spiralling wage bills and abysmal player recruitment led to destruction.

'Buy for £10million, release on a free' is not a policy that will get you far in football, though it was employed with troubling frequency on Wearside.

Short's reign was littered with frustrating incidents, no doubt for him, but predominantly for the 43,000 fans who piled into the Stadium of Light without a logical reason to do so.

Sunderland supporters remain bitter over England's Euro 2016 embarrassment against Iceland, as Roy Hodgson's subsequent departure paved the way for Sam Allardyce to leave and from that point on, the dominoes tumbled.

Big Sam's midfield titan Yann M'Vila was one of the finest players seen in red and white since the turn of the century.

The loanee claimed Sunderland were rejecting his calls, his desperate pleas to sign for the club on a free transfer, and he was never fully replaced.

Jordan Pickford – a goalkeeping talent cultivated through years of hard work at the Academy of Light – had finally blossomed, and Jermain Defoe – a Kevin Phillips-esque predatory goalscorer – had the club rooted under his skin.

Unfortunately, both departed upon relegation from the Premier League, and Pickford's eye-watering transfer fee was fed into the money-munching beast created by Short without the fans seeing a penny re-invested in the playing squad.

Lewis Grabban scored 13 league goals in the first half of the 'Championship rebuild' season, the latest glimmer of light.

However, by the January transfer window, he'd had enough and called time on his Sunderland career.

The Black Cats' top scorer bagged a goal against the club for Aston Villa on his return, and debts weighed heavy on the club as it creaked down into League One without so much as a whimper – one-time hero Darren Bent landed the inevitable sucker-punch.

Ellis Short was supposed to be the new dawn, but in true Sunderland style, they had landed a seemingly penniless, billionaire.

At 1:06pm on Sunday – 15 frantic minutes after Coleman's departure – Ellis Short made his final decision, and in an instant, from the jaws of crushing, abysmal, hopeless defeat, he redefined his legacy.

The 57-year-old Texan announced the sale of Sunderland AFC, with one line shouting louder than the rest: "Higher offers from less qualified buyers were rejected, and I have paid off all debts owed by the club to leave it financially strong and debt free for the first time since years before I owned it."

Debt-free.

Sunderland fans are a battle-hardened breed, they're underservedly accustomed to misery, but League One was set to be a humbling blow like no other. The very existence of the club started to look under threat.

That is, until the club's owner confirmed his imminent departure and a parting gift that involved writing off approximately £140million worth of debt.

Eastleigh chairman Stewart Donald is the new knight in shining armour leading the charge, but he is doing so with an entirely clean slate, in a league that doesn't require multi-millions and mega wages to win.

Clubs have been sold with modest price tags before, but Short's absorbing of the debt shows a genuine remorse that has spared the club from being financially strangled to the point of no return.

Incompetent at running a Premier League football club? The evidence says 'absolutely' but Short has accepted the consequences of his actions with apparent class, something that very few owners in modern day football have or will ever do.

Painful memories of the American's tenure will remain, the fruits of which may lead to a 2018/19 opening day fixture against Accrington Stanley, Wycombe Wanderers or AFC Wimbledon, but his final act has deservedly given the fans a stroke of luck they could barely have dreamed of.