Absolute gobshite!
https://www.a-love-supreme.com/single-post/2018/06/21/ALS-Speaks-to-Stewart-Donald
ALS: Is your biggest challenge moving on the high earners?
SD: Yes! Khazri’s agent came to me and said we should allow his client to leave for nothing, because he’s not a League One player! What they are trying to do is hold out as long is possible to get the vibe that we are desperate. We don’t react very well to people trying to take the Mickey out of us, therefore if we press on with our recruitment and we bring the right players in we have no need to sell them and they will remain our players. We will hold their contract and they will not play football. We are currently going through the process of trying to persuade the young players that their futures lie here. Most of the senior pros want to leave, but one or two might be surprised to find themselves staying.
Jack Rodwell, Lee Cattermole and Oviedo are the standout big earners and they are all on long term deals, I suspect we will only end up with one of those. The one we will struggle to move on is Lee Cattermole due to the length of his contract. If he wants to leave he can leave, we still owe £4.5m for Bryan Oviedo, so we would need a fee for him to move on. Lee Cattermole’s agent says he won’t leave a penny behind, so if he expects to move to a Championship side he has a footballing decision to make because we will not fund any of the difference in wages, why should we pay that over a long period especially when his agent (Margaret Byrne) agreed to the deal in the first place.
ALS: What’s Rodwell’s attitude been like?
SD: Rodwell has actually been very reasonable throughout the process, although we have refused him a loyalty bonus because he hasn’t been loyal. Simple as that, but he’s ready to have a very sensible conversation about his future. If we manage to move Rodwell on, we can afford to keep the likes of Wahbi Khazri and he’s a very good player. However, McNair’s agent has said that he will never ever play for Sunderland again. We turned down two offers for McNair, we had two offers from Brighton and we heard nothing from him or agent despite Paddy publically stating his desire to play in the Premier League. So, we were suspicious that they had lined up their own deal and were waiting to see what offer we would accept in order to inform the rest of the market what we would be willing to accept, therefore he could then go to a club who had bid below what they may have lined up with another club and they would get a bigger proportional cut of the fee. Paddy McNair has played very few games and has been injury prone, only one club has tried to match Middlesbrough’s valuation of him, that’s Stoke.
ALS: What about Kone?
SD: Kone has been very quiet and his agent hasn’t said anything, and we have a feeling that they are playing the long game and waiting for us to panic on transfer deadline day and accept a much lower offer. We want fees on every single player, there’s three or four that wouldn’t command a fee, but McNair said he didn’t want to play, but we haven’t had an offer that matches our valuation, so we will keep him. Naturally, his agent protested and said, ‘yeah but you’ll need to sell him.’ That’s not the case, like I said earlier it’s not going anywhere if we can generate income elsewhere which will mean he can stay here unless our valuation is met. After speaking to 75% of the squad, Jack Ross reported back that only Ethan Robson wanted to stay and after he held discussions with the other 25%, three or four more expressed a desire to stay. Each player has an individual value and we will be determined to not sell for less thank these market values. There is still a discrepancy because we still need to pay money owed on the likes of Didier Ndong, Ricky Alvarez and other signings we’ve made over the past few years and we have an agreement with Ellis thereby he will split the money with outstanding payments, 50:50. If we don’t get what is on the sheet for Ndong then we can fund the shortfall. In terms of the fit and proper persons test we were cautious on money generated in player sales but we were strong on the way we can bring costs down etc. I had to prove I had the funds to cover the running of the club even if there was no player sales and obviously I met that criteria. To be honest if we sat down in a room we probably could have done it in half a day, all of money has come from heavily regulated businesses. Regulated far tougher than any football club, it’s not like I’m a gunman from Peru! There are quite a lot of variables and we have a lot of work to do to fit our own business plan.
