Premier League club’s owner launches stinging attack on Championship and fumes ‘why should we pay’
DAVID SULLIVAN has blasted Championship clubs who pay players £40,000-a-week and managers £1million-a-year.
And the West Ham co-owner asks: “Why should the Premier League pay for that?”
The EFL receives £130m-a-season in solidarity payments from the top flight — but Prem chiefs have failed to agree a new six-year £924m deal.
Sullivan, 75, claims EFL clubs or incompetent owners have racked up debts because they do not live within their means.
And he dismissed EFL chairman Rick Parry’s claim the top flight pays £2BILLION more in wages than the other four major European leagues.
Businessman Sullivan came out fighting to SunSport after reading our Monday EFL column which criticised his failure to agree more Prem funding.
He argued: “The flaw in the system is the Championship. These clubs are having financial problems because they’re paying too high wages and agent fees and some have managers on £1MILLION a year.
“If you look at Serie B [Italy’s second tier], the managers don’t earn that nor are players on £30,000, £40,000 a week!
“If the EFL can’t work with the funds we give them now, what suggests they can work with another £50m or £100m?
“They should manage their finances better and stop paying silly money.
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“But they don’t want to because they’re competing to get into the Premier League.
“If we give to the EFL what they want, in five years we’ll be exactly where we are today.”
Sullivan blames owners who have proved incompetent, or stopped pouring money into chasing the dream of promotion to the Premier League.
He said: “Some EFL owners are richer than those in the Premier League.
“Yet some clubs have got into trouble because their owners have gone for promotion but got fed up.
“Then there’s my old club, Birmingham. They sacked a good manager, John Eustace, when they were on the verge of the play-offs to bring in a flagship name in Wayne Rooney. It messed it up.
“Why should we subsidise their incompetence?”
Sullivan insists promotion-chasing Ipswich should be used as a model.
He added: “They’re a flag bearer for everything that’s good.
“They’ve done it within their budget.
“They’re a well-supported club, which helps. But then look at Bradford, who’re getting almost 20,000 in League Two and cannot do better on the pitch.
“There’s Stoke, who could go down to League One with one of the richest owners.”
EFL chairman Parry believes parachutes cause a huge imbalance in the Championship.
A relegated club receives £55m in their first season, another £45m for the second and, if that team was in the Prem for more than a year before relegation, £20m in the third.
That adds up to a whopping £120m. In the same period, a normal Championship side gets £8.2m-a-season, totalling just £24.6m. Parry says relegated teams also benefit from receiving bumper transfer fees.
Leicester banked £92m from selling James Maddison, Harvey Barnes, Timothy Castagne and George Hirst last summer, immediately after their relegation.
Sullivan said: “In the Premier League, if you’re on TV it’s £900,000-a-game but drops to £100,000 in the Championship.
“Our sponsors give us £10m a year — but that’d fall to £1m. Total income drops by 75-80 per cent.
“Some players you go down with are assets — for example Maddison.
“But you have others who’ve got injured or aren’t in-form and you’re paying them £100,000-a-week. You can’t give these players away.
“You might have paid £30m for a player on a five-year deal, he’s had a disastrous season and you’re forced to get him off the wage bill by releasing him for nothing. That’s £24m written off!
“You can’t put relegation clauses in their contracts that get them to drop their pay by 75-80 per cent.”
Sullivan says withdrawing parachute payments would weaken top-flight competitiveness.
He argues promoted teams will not risk investing in their squads — because there is no buffer if they go down.
And he added: “Those clubs wouldn’t spend a penny because they’d go bankrupt as soon as they were relegated.
“Around half of the Premier League teams would not take on overheads in a bid to compete with top clubs.”
Sullivan believes a regulator will take £10m-a-year out of the game.
The Government wants to grant powers to an independent body to oversee clubs in the top five tiers.
They will be tasked with deciding how much money the Premier League should filter into the EFL and National League.
Multi-millionaire Sullivan fumed: “It’s going to cost £10m-a-year with 50 staff to run this Quango. They’ll operate from home three days a week because they can’t get the Civil Service to work.”
Sullivan fears if the Premier League pays more money, the gap between the clubs who have qualified for Europe and those who have not will widen.
He said: “If they want another £100m-a-year, the top clubs want everyone to contribute the same, while the rest want those in Europe to pay more. You need 14 teams to agree — that’s unlikely.
“So it ends up being divided equally. If you take £5m off Manchester City, it’s not much. If you take that from a bottom club, it’s significant.
“There’ll be a bias to big sides when you’re trying to make it competitive.”
EFL chairman Parry dismisses Sullivan’s claims the Prem could lose their status as the best in the world.
He argues top-flight clubs pay £2bn more wages per season, according to figures from accountants Deloitte, than Germany, Italy, Spain and France — so extra revenue paid to the EFL would not dilute their power.
But Sullivan said: “That figure is exaggerated. We don’t pay £100m-a club more.
“I accept we overall pay higher but in Italy they’ve 28 per cent top-rate tax, Portugal 25 per cent. Here it’s 45.
“It’s easier sometimes for them to attract top players.
“But we have a more competitive league because there are more clubs who can pay higher wages.
“In Spain, it’s Real Madrid and Barcelona. In Scotland, Rangers and Celtic.
“Here, you’ve got Newcastle and Aston Villa breaking into those top places.
“There’s not a successful business in the world which is forced to pay money to their competitors.
“We could damage the Premier League — which is the golden goose.
“If that happens, we won’t get the TV money we do, everything declines and we won’t have the cash to filter down anyway.”