PREMIER LEAGUE:NIALL QUINN, the Sunderland chairman, has called for the Premier League to restrain spending on players' wages after revealing that his club made a €28.7 million loss for the last financial year.
Quinn said all the clubs should agree before the start of every season to spend an agreed, reasonable proportion of their income on wages, and that the Premier League centrally should have the power to impose sanctions, including points deductions and even expulsion, on clubs that serially overspend.
“There should be some sort of disclosure of where your wages are at, prior to the year ahead,” said Quinn. “A percentage of how much you have coming in and what you are spending on wages.
“At least then every club is telling the chairman of the Premier League: ‘This is where we hope to be, this is our business plan’, so nobody has gone off the wall on their own.
“If it looks excessive, the Premier League chairman should have the power to say: ‘we as a group are not happy, be careful, you are coming into a red area here’.
“Maybe let clubs do it one year, but if you do it for the third year in the row, you are docked points and you are out.”
Quinn also voiced support for Uefa’s Financial Fair Play initiative, which will be phased in for clubs in European competition from 2012-2013, requiring them to break even, not make losses, over a financial year.
He argued the controls should apply to Premier League clubs. “Wouldn’t it be better if it was put in beforehand and clubs had to work to that budget,” Quinn said of the break-even requirement, “rather than put in as a loss, and the owner had to put [in the money]?
“Do it before the case, not after you are in trouble.”
Quinn’s arguments have added personal force given the scale of losses Sunderland will declare when the 2008-2009 accounts are published imminently.
The club expects to make a similar loss, a further €28.7 million, over the current year to July 31st, 2010.
Those combined losses will be principally due to spending on signings such as Darren Bent and Michael Turner, and servicing an increased wage bill of €55.2 million. Quinn said that the rise in spending is being bankrolled by the club’s owner, the US private equity magnate Ellis Short, who is now based in London. Short, Quinn said, has invested €85 million in Sunderland.
The club spent €71.3 million on wages last year. This equates to 78 per cent of Sunderland’s income, exactly the same percentage as that in the most recently published accounts at Portsmouth, who have been declared insolvent and gone into administration.
Quinn argued that Sunderland’s position is much more secure because Short has put his money in for shares in the club, not as loans, and he is prepared to continue to invest for the club to progress.
- Guardian service
