Quinn backs tough pay plan

Mackems chief says players would have paid penalty for relegation

By Richard Bailey   Last updated: 30th June 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Quinn backs tough pay plan

Quinn: Insists on relegation clauses

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Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn has revealed that if Sunderland went down last season players would have seen their wages drop by up to 50 per cent.

Quinn highlighted that players have relegation clauses added into their contracts when they arrive at the Stadium of Light unlike their neighbours Newcastle.

The Black Cats survived the drop by two points on the last day of the season but the Mackems chief highlights that it would have been the players suffering if the team had gone down, not the club's staff.

Neighbours Newcastle and Middlesbrough are likely to let go of a large number of workers to cut costs as they get used to life in the Championship but Quinn insists that would not have been the case at Sunderland.

Salaries trimmed

"We had it planned for quite a while that relegation would be put more on the players than the staff," he told the Daily Mail.

"It wouldn't have been a knee-jerk reaction to do that. The players' salaries would have been trimmed, not the staff, and we had a survival plan in place.

"You don't feel so sorry for the player who has to go and drive his Ferrari out of the gates.

"We try very hard when it comes to relegation clauses. We've probably got to the stage where we're 90 per cent there and for new players now, we would insist on it."