Few individuals have had a wide-ranging football career like yours – do you consider yourself to have been a better player, boss or chairman, having performed all three roles at Sunderland?
Well, I’ll immediately rule out my managerial career, if indeed you can count it as a career. I sacked myself after just a handful of games. Without ever diminishing what I achieved as a Sunderland player, I’m probably prouder of what I achieved as chairman. I had to learn on the job very quickly. I remember my first day in the job, I was never off the phone to shareholders trying to get our consortium up to 90 per cent, and lawyers in London trying to thrash out all the legal complexities. That was on top of training the team, because I was the manager at the time as well. I took on a
