Cats, contracts and coronavirus - your questions are answered...
fact that he clearly wanted to move on). He’s been proven right, with Asoro struggling to make an impact at Swansea and not forcing his way through even after the sale of Dan James last summer.
Having said that, he’s played fairly regularly on loan at FC Groningen at a good standard in the Eredivisie this season, and time remains firmly on his side.
He may well have a good career and it will be interesting to see if Groningen take up their option to sign him this summer. The key for him in the long term is going to be consistency and end product.
He has to prepare for every eventuality and one of those will be the prospect of not playing in front of fans until next year. For what it’s worth, we absolutely do not know for certain that this is going to be the case.
The furlough scheme clearly helps Sunderland and another big relief has been the PAYE tax help from the government for sport and leisure companies.
There is an acceptance, though, that football is going to change. Budgets, wages and fees are going to come down and Sunderland will not be immune.
The owners have been bullish about the now significantly reduced cost base at the club, with Donald suggesting in his most recent interview with talkSPORT that he believes Sunderland will be in a stronger position to compete with other clubs due to the current circumstances.
That will make the summer period very interesting and as mentioned, gate money is a massive issue.
There should be an update on that in the coming weeks and there will be another decision to be made, given that we are at this stage no clearer to knowing how and when football will be played, this season or next. and one for League One.
Some players out of contract will certainly feature in both, but the level of pay they could be offered may differ depending on the division.
For the most part, I think some turnover is absolutely natural.
It’s a major failing that the Jon McLaughlin issue was not sorted long before now and I don’t see it being resolved one way or the other now until the fate of the current campaign is known.
So while I expect planning to ramp up significantly in the current period, I think we are a little way off knowing what decisions have been made.
An interesting point that I can’t say I’d ever really considered before!
I suppose under Phil Parkinson it’s often worked quite well, with Sunderland building up a real head of steam and blowing teams away in the first half on a few occasions.
I’ve no idea whether changing that would make much of a difference but it’s an interesting observation!