Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn feels he was justified to have a pop at stay-away fans choosing to watch live matches in the pub rather than attend games. The Irishman said he used the word "despise" in order to generate attention for the club's appeal against televised Saturday afternoon football. Quinn told BBC Newcastle: "I did use emotive language, I did think long and hard about using the word despise.
"It was a tactical thing to say, which worked and it got a response."
Quinn continued: "I'm delighted it got us to the front page of the papers and radio programmes and at last I can have a meaningful debate.
"I'm able to highlight the problem, I'm able to tell you our crowd has lost around 6,000 people in the time we became successful.
"Anybody who says they can't afford to come down to the game, there's no way I would ever criticise, the problem is that people are going down to the pub and spending equivalent amounts of money."
