June 30 – Sunderland owner Ellis Short (pictured) has taken the club off the market after sales talks with potential new German owners broke down.
A club statement said: “Ellis Short and the board were committed to ascertain if this group was better placed to take the club forward in the right way and to improve it, both on and off the pitch.
“A defined timeframe was placed on discussions to ensure that the club could move forward quickly and decisively with its plans for the new season should they not come to fruition.
“We have concluded these talks and have determined that this proposed sale would not be in the best interests of Sunderland AFC.”
The statement said Short will continue financial and personal commitment to the club moving forward. The amount of money Short will commit is unclear. While the negotiations for the sale were ongoing, Short had limited transfer spending to £20 million despite having achieved £30 million for the sale of Jordan Pickford.
The unnamed German consortium was believed to have offered £85 million for 100% of the club, though there is a bank loan of £35 million that was still under negotiation as well as Short’s conditions of a bonus if Sunderland returned to the Premier League within three seasons.
Short had maintained that the deadline for the negotiations to complete was always the beginning of July to all ow the club to prepare for the new season. The first major decision being the appointment of new manager Simon Grayson yesterday. But while Grayson was arriving from Preston North End, star striker Jermaine Defoe was departing for the south coast and Premier League Bournemouth.
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