AN Old Etonian might not be your first choice of populist rabble rouser, but as Charlie Methven spelled out his vision for Sunderland’s future direction at the Stadium of Light on Monday, he was effectively issuing a call to arms against the kind of casino capitalism that has brought the club to its knees.

“For too long, this club has been throwing cash at people who don’t really want to be here,” moaned Methven. “That p**s-take party stops now.” You suspect he didn’t learn language like that during Classics.

Methven and Stewart Donald might come across as the archetypal odd couple – one, a privileged wheeler-dealer adept in the dark arts of PR spin, the other, a self-made millionaire whose wide-eyed expression suggests he still can’t quite believe he has been able to buy one of the biggest football clubs in the country – but together they are convinced they can succeed where those before them have failed.

Sir Bob Murray oversaw Sunderland’s successful move to the Stadium of Light, but was unable to take the club to the next level once it had dipped its toes in the Premier League. Ellis Short blew £200m trying to elevate Sunderland alongside the big boys, but left with his tail between his legs and his club in League One.

Short in particular felt that money was the answer to all of the Black Cats’ problems, and in football, the bottom line tends to be the one that counts. That cannot be ignored when Donald and Methven have taken over a club that has around £25m of transfer commitments to honour this summer and was operating with a wage bill of more than £80m in its last set of published accounts.

That wage bill will have dropped markedly in the last 12 months, but it is still cripplingly high when posited against projected League One income, and at Monday’s press conference, Donald felt compelled to set the record straight when it came to his financial worth.

“They (the Football League) needed to see I was liquid to the tune of the business plan, and that was more than £40m,” he said. “I know I’m supposedly worth £8m, but somehow I’ve managed to find £50m in my piggybank and the EFL have seen that, so there’s no problems.”

Eventually, the colour of the money will matter. For now, though, the most positive thing to have emerged from Donald and Methven’s first week in charge is the acknowledgment that simply throwing more money at the multiple problems facing Sunderland is not the best way to come up with some transformative solutions.

For far too long now, it has been assumed that pouring cash into a bottomless pit is the only way to turn Sunderland around. It is why Short was forced to write off more than £125m of debt in order to engineer an escape plan, and it is why Jack Rodwell was able to pocket £70,000-a-week last season without even kicking a ball.

We have all been complicit in the deception, from the managers who banged on Short’s door demanding another £10m for a centre-forward, to the supporters clogging up phone-ins and message boards calling for yet another signing spree, to us in the media who have become obsessed with the amount of ‘net spend’ from one season to the next.

If more than £200m has proved insufficient to cure Sunderland’s ills, it is time to accept that a new approach is needed, and while the proof of the pudding will not become evident for a while, the incoming regime has made a decent attempt of trying to start on a different foot.

The comparisons Methven drew with Borussia Dortmund might seem fanciful as Sunderland prepare to take on the likes of Fleetwood and Accrington Stanley next season, but the thrust of his argument citing the Bundesliga club as a template to follow was valid.

Dortmund are a club that have learned how to consistently punch above their weight. They have harnessed a powerful sense of supporter solidarity and used the size and passion of their fan base to drive financial and footballing growth. They have prioritised the development of a strong academy set-up and encouraged their managers to introduce home-grown talent into the first team. They have accepted they cannot match their leading Bundesliga rivals in a straight monetary battle, so have devised other ways of keeping ahead of the crowd.

Why shouldn’t Sunderland be able to do something similar? Dortmund’s fans believe they are every bit as responsible for driving the club forward as the players on the pitch or the owners in the boardroom. That is quite a profound difference to the prevailing attitudes at most clubs in this country, where fans turn the spotlight back to those above them and demand money is spent to improve their team’s fortunes.

After conducting Monday’s formal press conference at the Stadium of Light, Donald and Methven hot-footed it to the studios of Roker Report, a popular fans’ website, and made themselves available for an hour-long podcast.

It was the kind of engagement Sunderland supporters’ have been crying out for, but were denied throughout Short’s reign. It was an astute and well-received move, but the pair used their time to subtly start shifting the way Sunderland fans think about their club.

“If you want the pink seats at the Stadium of Light replacing, then maybe we could do something like that together,” Donald suggested at one stage. “I’d front up the costs, the fans provide the labour, we’d provide the refreshments, and we all have a day or two, or a weekend, and we’d all do the ground together. That’s the type of football club I want.”

Health and safety regulations might scupper that idea, but the general message was clear. ‘This is your club and I want to help look after it – but I can’t do everything. If you want genuine change, you’re going to have to help make it happen’.

It is a powerful message, and as Sunderland look to rebuild in the third tier, it might actually be beneficial that they do not boast owners with a bottomless pot of money. The ‘cash is king’ approach has failed time and time again, so actively reengaging the fan base and attempting to develop a new relationship between the club and its supporters seems as good a way as any to begin the process of renewal.

Money will be needed this summer, particularly if Sunderland are unable to offload the cabal of high earners that have accompanied the club on its slide from the top-flight. But a complete reboot is required, and funding another round of transfer spending will only be a part of that.

“Modern football has made fans feel disengaged to their club, and I don’t think that’s ever truer than at Sunderland,” said Donald.

It is time for that to change. It is time for the p**s-take party to end.