Six months ago Maja had one senior career goal to his name and outside Sunderland, nobody had heard of him. No manager had ever put him in a regular starting XI.
Fast forward to now - even though he only has 15 career goals (very modest for a 20 year old), a club that’s on course for promotion and has just broken the League One attendance record - with a manager that’s got faith in him - has offered him a 700% pay rise on the back of three good months. I’d say that was a pretty easy decision to make from a sporting perspective. In fact, I’d say it’s a pretty easy decision to make from a financial perspective as well. He need only look at his mate Asoro and his recent career trajectory. The fact he’s finding the decision anything other than easy comes down to greed. His greed, and/or the agents.
As a club, we need to be better than that now. We need to be above it. At least long enough to shake off the soft touch image that we’ve spent ten years building amongst agents and the like.
