A football finance guru has dropped a claim on relegation and what it may mean for the potential takeover of Newcastle United.
A recent report from The Times has revealed that players at the St. James’ Park faithful have no relegation clauses in their current deals, meaning that their wage bill would not change even if they were to go down to the EFL Championship from the Premier League.
Speaking to Football Insider, Kieran Maguire has claimed that the contract situation could make it much more difficult for Mike Ashley to sell the North East club:
“My main concern would be that, should the worst happen and Newcastle were relegated, it makes them less attractive to a prospective new owner because they’ll say: ‘Well, I’m buying a club which has got these white elephants.’
“That would impact on A) whether prospective buyers want to buy Newcastle and B) the price they will offer Mike Ashley.
“I wouldn’t want to pay more money because if I’ve got a player on £40,000-per-week for the next three years, that’s over £6m on someone who I’m not really going to get much of a return on.
“If the players aren’t happy, you don’t want unhappy players at the club. What are you going to do with them?”
Newcastle takeover harder with relegation
If the Tyneside club were to find themselves relegated from the top flight at the end of the 2020/21 term, then it would certainly be a lot harder to see the potential takeover by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) group going through.
Not only would a large wage bill for the Championship be a problem in terms of finances, but a club in the second division will certainly not be as an attractive proposition to the prospective new owners, and Ashley would not be able to demand as much money for a sale.
In other news, find out whose display against Aston Villa was slammed by Lee Ryder here!