Donald reveals wage bill ‘bad news’ at club

Sunderland chairman Stewart Donald admits Lee Cattermole and Bryan Oviedo staying at the club is ‘bad news’ for the Black Cats’ finances.

Donald has revealed that Sunderland are still paying £11million a year wages to players who were at the club last year – plus £3million to the new players signed in the summer.

Cattermole and Oviedo are both believed to be on around £2million a year, while other players from last season remain at the club on Championship wages.

While he praised Cattermole and Oviedo’s professionalism, Donald said: “Financially, yes, it is bad news. And it is bad news. But that isn’t their fault.

“Bryan said at the end of the season he would look to move on and he’s come back, he’s on an awful lot of money.

“When we came in we did a budget that said we would basically pay £10million in wages and we would have to spend £4million tidying up contracts because we had the Jack Rodwells, etc.

“The reality is we spent zero tidying up contracts but, worse than that, our wage bill is over because we haven’t been able to get rid of Ndong and Djilobodji and a couple of others. That’s bad news.

“Putting Djilobodji and Ndong to one side, with the rest of the squad I think we have got the wage bill down from £20million-odd to around £11million. We’ve managed to halve it.

“And the new squad has cost around £3million (in wages) to put together. In this league, £3million or £4million is a decent wage budget and £5million or £6million means you are at the top.

“We’ve spent that on new players, £3million-off, but we still have £11million in the existing squad and we haven’t got £11million in value.

“With League One revenue, that is not sustainable.

“We’ve had one window, and in future windows we are going to have to tackle that. The problem is that it has left us almost no wriggle room.

“When January comes, it is going to be a challenge for us.”