Kieran Maguire: Sunderland cautious about ‘hidden clauses’ after £125m news
Sunderland and their EFL allies will be carefully monitoring the £125million funding offer from the Premier League for any strings attached.
That is the opinion of finance expert Kieran Maguire, who spoke exclusively to Football Insider about the Premier League’s latest offer for financial distribution.
As reported by SportsProMedia last Wednesday (22 March), the Premier League has offered the EFL £125million in funding in a bid to end their long-running dispute over financial distribution in the English football pyramid.
The EFL, Premier League and FA have been locked in talks for months, and this is the latest proposal from the Premier League as the threat of government intervention grows more and more likely.
The latest offer of £125million is around half of what the EFL initially demanded from England’s top flight division.
Maguire believes that the Premier League have learned from their previous mistakes and will make sure that ‘hidden clauses’ are involved in their latest offer.
“No matter what, the EFL will always wants more money from this deal,” Maguire told Football Insider‘s Sean Fisher.
“An additional £125million per year is half of what the EFL were asking for.
“It’s likely that there will be strings attached to those monies.
“The Premier League wants to avoid scenarios similar to when they committed to solidarity payments as a fixed percentage of broadcast revenues.
“In that case, they saw all of the extra money go straight through to player wages, and now you will no longer get something for nothing in negotiations with the Premier League.
“All of the teams in the EFL will be carefully keeping an eye on the nature of the deal to try and spot any hidden clauses which will inevitably be involved.“
In other news, Sunderland fans face ‘huge fees’ as £200m deal chased