Last winter, Josh Maja left Sunderland for Bordeaux for £1.53 million. He has made 11 appearances in Lige 1 from the bench so far this season and scored just one goal (transfermarkt.co.uk).
According to the player and club owner Steward Donald, all parties involved wanted the striker to stay at the club. Maja wanted to remain in England to fight for his spot while Donald wanted the player to become an integral part of his team’s project. But the youngster insisted that the contract presented by Sunderland wasn’t good enough and he was forced to leave (Sunderland Echo).
Sunderland fans responded to the comments, indicating that Donald should have done whatever it took to keep the player at the Stadium of Light. They firmly believe that Sunderland would have achieved promotion to the Championship if Maja was there until the end of the season.
The deal that he was offered was pathetic considering he was scoring for fun. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I remember thinking how poor it was at the time considering the goals he was scoring
— Michael (@mich_aelo) November 18, 2019
I’m not a pro footballer so not really sure how agents, clubs, and contracts work. But i have no doubt if he’d stayed we would have gone up. He scored 16 goals in 4 months before he left. It would take Wyke and Grigg 3 seasons to get that many between them.
— jon (@Jonphillips7777) November 18, 2019
Other fans think Maja leaving was bad financial business. While the player was demanding high sums of money, his eventual exit forced the club to spend excessive funds in other areas. Another group of fans want Maja to prove how much he wanted to stay at Sunderland by coming back.
Him leaving made us spend ~£4 million on Grigg so even paying him £75,000 p/w he would’ve got us promoted and been better value than Grigg. He was the best player in the league by far… Stewart should’ve given him an empty contract told him to write whatever he wanted.
— NM (@NMaynaard) November 18, 2019
The difference between the 10 he was offered and the 15 his agent wanted amounts to £205000 to date extra we would have paid. We spent 10 times as much on Will Grigg for zero return. Promotion would have netted £7million guaranteed from Sky, and a successful takeover. TPTSH
— Paul Summerside (@summerside49) November 18, 2019
Come back then
— Grumm (@pgrumm) November 18, 2019
To this fan, however, the story just doesn’t add up. He feels as if the deal to keep Maja would have gone through assuming all parties had a common interest.
Some explanation is needed here somebody is not telling the full story he would have got us promoted & saved us potentially the money wasted on goal shy Grigg
— doug raine (@dougraine3) November 18, 2019
What do we think?
Maja still hasn’t earned a league start in France, but at 20 years of age, he has plenty of time to find his feet. It seems unlikely that Sunderland would be looking to bring the player back now, but they certainly need something new if they want to start winning on a regular basis.