Sunderland owner Ellis Short has announced plans to identify the club’s next twenty managers in the wake of their latest desperately scraped Premier League survival.

The perennial strugglers, north eastern, battled their way to a 0-0 draw at Arsenal last night to ensure another season of largely tedious top flight football at the Stadium of Light.

However, Irish-American businessman Short believes he has stumbled upon the formula for unbroken success going forward, at least as long as ‘success’ can be defined as not making a total ’15-point Mick McCarthy season’ of it at any point.

He said: “Step one: hire mediocre manager just before playing Newcastle.

“Step two: beat Newcastle. Step three: battle grimly to safety. Step four: play majority of following season as if drunk and chained to lampposts.

“Step five: sack manager. Step six: repeat previous five steps.

“Piece of piss, this football lark.”