Sunderland's running costs are 'scary' and must be reduced, says Stewart Donald


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He's clearly not though. He's telling us we're massively inefficient before we even start thinking about paying the players. People need to get that through their heads.

We are a football club. Sadly maintaining a stadium and paying staff are necessary to exist as a football club. We have shut half of the stadium and sacked a lot of staff under Bain.

When it gets to the point that having a stadium and staff is too expensive to exist then you have to look at additional revenue streams instead of just cutting away.

An immediate return to the championship is looking quite unlikely to me now and it feels as if we are setting up for 4/5 seasons down here. That article already mentions League Two clubs.
 
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We are a football club. Sadly maintaining a stadium and paying staff are necessary to exist as a football club. We have shut half of the stadium and sacked a lot of staff under Bain.

When it gets to the point that having a stadium and staff is too expensive to exist then you have to look at additional revenue streams instead of just cutting away.

An immediate return to the championship is looking quite unlikely to me now and it feels as if we are setting up for 4/5 seasons down here.
That's the big worry.
 
Bain made big cuts (not necessarily correctly or in the right places) so what he inherited was even worse than it is now.
I've heard since (not claiming ITK status, but Methven let it slip in conversation apparently) that Bain hadn't exactly got things running efficiently so his cuts weren't effective and there was some dodgy dealing going on as well behind the scenes. Surprise, surprise.
 
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but if he isn't talking about players wages he is essentially talking about redundancies for local people, that is nothing to be celebrated. I worry that his head hasn't shifted fron an Eastleigh mentality.

I don’t see anyone celebrating tbh. The fact is it has been run very badly for a long time, its going to need some hard decisions as a business to sort it out and by default that includes a review of staffing.

Sometimes that is needed, even more so in league 1 where there is limited income. Get it running efficiently now and it’ll be a lot easier if we go up
 
Haven't they all been cut this season?
Obviously still mental, but a little easier to sell as a result surely?

some players will still be getting massive wages like Rodwell and some will still be getting 30kish like cattermole which is massive for this league...

Top priority for SAFC imo.
 
An immediate return to the championship is looking quite unlikely to me now and it feels as if we are setting up for 4/5 seasons down here. That article already mentions League Two clubs.

You should be called white flag!;)

We’ll go up first attempt imo.
 
We are a football club. Sadly maintaining a stadium and paying staff are necessary to exist as a football club. We have shut half of the stadium and sacked a lot of staff under Bain.

When it gets to the point that having a stadium and staff is too expensive to exist then you have to look at additional revenue streams instead of just cutting away.

An immediate return to the championship is looking quite unlikely to me now and it feels as if we are setting up for 4/5 seasons down here. That article already mentions League Two clubs.

:confused: Where the hell have you pulled that one from?
 
That's the big worry.

Sadly we won't get out by slashing kids working in the kiosks and buying 'experienced' league one journeymen. People seem very happy with what they have heard so far from the new owners but I am incredibly worried. It sounds like deeper austerity, with a lack of understanding what is needed to take a club to the premier league. I'm still in the position of wait and see he may know better than I do. But it's ultimately just a continuation of what fucked us under Short. We need to bring in some players, because as it stands we will be starting the season with Matthews and Love as our only defenders, and all I'm hearing is that the lass in reception at the AOL better start looking for another job to save 20k.
 
Sadly we won't get out by slashing kids working in the kiosks and buying 'experienced' league one journeymen. People seem very happy with what they have heard so far from the new owners but I am incredibly worried. It sounds like deeper austerity, with a lack of understanding what is needed to take a club to the premier league. I'm still in the position of wait and see he may know better than I do. But it's ultimately just a continuation of what fucked us under Short. We need to bring in some players, because as it stands we will be starting the season with Matthews and Love as our only defenders, and all I'm hearing is that the lass in reception at the AOL better start looking for another job to save 20k.

Just the opposite from what I have read
 
I don’t see anyone celebrating tbh. The fact is it has been run very badly for a long time, its going to need some hard decisions as a business to sort it out and by default that includes a review of staffing.

Sometimes that is needed, even more so in league 1 where there is limited income. Get it running efficiently now and it’ll be a lot easier if we go up
@Grumpy Old Man posted some figures recently which showed that we had huge numbers of non paying staff at the club. Twice as many as Southampton iirc and far more than the mags amongst others. Certainly gave the impression that we'd become bloated and inefficient off the field in addition to being shite on it.
 
The whole article was about trying to get people to look past the obvious main cost of players and get people to realise that the whole club, every single aspect of it, seems to be costing too much money to run.

The main goal is getting the high contract players off the books. No one needs to remind anyone that we can't afford 40k a week salaries. The real fundamentals are that we are running the entire club as if we still have 100m TV money when we don't, we have a million or so from the league when the parachute payments run out and so we need to change the club to suit that sort of income.

There will be cut backs all over the place

The parachute payments are going to amount to just under £50m. That is 100x what the rest of league 1 will get in TV money.

So the question remains. Are we actually getting all of that to spend on the club or is £40m of it effectively earmarked to pay (directly or indirectly) for the shares.

That is the elephant in the room finance wise at the moment.
 
Sadly we won't get out by slashing kids working in the kiosks and buying 'experienced' league one journeymen. People seem very happy with what they have heard so far from the new owners but I am incredibly worried. It sounds like deeper austerity, with a lack of understanding what is needed to take a club to the premier league. I'm still in the position of wait and see he may know better than I do. But it's ultimately just a continuation of what fucked us under Short. We need to bring in some players, because as it stands we will be starting the season with Matthews and Love as our only defenders, and all I'm hearing is that the lass in reception at the AOL better start looking for another job to save 20k.

What a pile of shite. Even by the standards of the shite on here that is honking. The new manager doesn't get back from his jollies until today or summit. Have we been linked to any experienced league one journeyman? Please remember that we only appointed the bloke on Friday, he's on holiday and it's been a Bank Holiday.
 
:confused: Where the hell have you pulled that one from?

Simply my own observations. It's largely just an opinion given what I have seen or heard, the majority of others haven't come to the same conclusion so we may be ok. The league 2 bit cane from the article

"Donald also says Sunderland’s cost-base is higher than the entire turnover of 20 teams in League Two"

You should be called white flag!;)

We’ll go up first attempt imo.

I sincerely hope you are right. However a good look at the squad makes me shit myself tbh.

I don’t see anyone celebrating tbh. The fact is it has been run very badly for a long time, its going to need some hard decisions as a business to sort it out and by default that includes a review of staffing.

Sometimes that is needed, even more so in league 1 where there is limited income. Get it running efficiently now and it’ll be a lot easier if we go up

I hope you are right and that we can cut our way out of this. What is an acceptable timeline for you by the way?
 
I think the ladies team has to go. Alas you can just tell that if he makes that call there will be all sorts of criticism for him on social media. For me, at this level, we can't be carrying something that makes such a loss. If we get back to the prem it's definitely worth having but if it can't be self sustaining we simply shouldn't be spending that much on it in this league
Everything about the club should be geared towards making the first team successful and nothing else, at the end of the day that is the only thing that matters. It was mentioned above that we may need to keep the ladies team in order to maintain the status of our academy. If that is true then it may be worth us keeping the ladies team as long as the benefit of having a cat1 academy as opposed to a lower level one really would help us get better players through to the first team. If not the ladies team definitely should go.
 
The parachute payments are going to amount to just under £50m. That is 100x what the rest of league 1 will get in TV money.

So the question remains. Are we actually getting all of that to spend on the club or is £40m of it effectively earmarked to pay (directly or indirectly) for the shares.

That is the elephant in the room finance wise at the moment.

The parachute payments will be security- so i'm assuming we cant spend it until Short is paid the £40M in full?
 
What a pile of shite. Even by the standards of the shite on here that is honking. The new manager doesn't get back from his jollies until today or summit. Have we been linked to any experienced league one journeyman? Please remember that we only appointed the bloke on Friday, he's on holiday and it's been a Bank Holiday.
Must be SBCs alt account.
 
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