Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has been discussing the hierarchy at Sunderland and how much Stewart Donald could sell the club for.
Donald purchased the club from its former owner Ellis Short in May 2018 for a fee in the region of £40m (per BBC).
However, with the side still in League One two years later, Donald resigned from his position as chairman on Saturday and is continuing his search to find a new owner for the Black Cats (per Sunderland).
So, in the latest episode of The Price of Football podcast, Maguire discussed how much Donald should be looking to get for the club, but expressed some concerns about the North-East outfit.
He said: “I went and did my sums, I looked at some comparisons to other clubs, added on a little bit for Sunderland’s potential. I think if he got £20-£25m, that will probably be fair, but you’ve got to be wary of Sunderland – even when the club was in the Premier League, it was still losing money.
“You look at some of the payments that were going out of that club. They got through three or four chief executives who were on huge sums of money and every time they left, they got a huge payoff as well.
“The way that the club has been run for a long period of time genuinely causes me concerns because you shouldn’t be losing that amount of money, you shouldn’t be getting through that amount of managers, that number of chief executives.
“There’s something toxic and ultimately, the culture of a club is shaped by what happens at the very top, and I just want whoever takes over at Sunderland to be that right person who’s got the best interests of the club at heart.
“Stewart Donald, when he came in, there was all this talk of a five-year plan and things of this nature, but he was hawking the club around to make a dollar out of it from pretty much six months into ownership, which does make me feel very uneasy.”
TIF Thoughts…
As can be seen in what Maguire had to say, he believes that Donald could get somewhere in the region of £20-£25m for the club, however, he believes prospective owners will be wary of Sunderland.
Do you believe the right owner can turn things around for Sunderland?
No, there's too much wrong
Yes, just need a good owner
As is highlighted by their downward spiral since their relegation from the Premier League during the 2016/17 season (per Transfermarkt), there does seem to be something amiss at The Stadium of Light.