Newcastle’s lack of relegation clauses could plunge club into financial turmoil

‘We’ll be OK’

Steve Bruce was bullish a couple of weeks ago after the 3-1 defeat against Manchester United. Since then his side still hasn’t won, could the words of Bruce soon come back to bite him?

“Fulham have had a good week and won a couple of games, which at the bottom end of the table is big,” Bruce said.

“My message to the supporters is that I’m convinced we’ll be OK.”

Pressed on the situation of the club and that soon the side could be plunged into a gloomy situation.

“I agree with you, it’s gloomy, but I was pleased with the performance today, especially in the first hour, but you have to turn those performances into results and I’m still quietly confident we will get the results we need.

“Of course fans don’t want to see their team at the wrong end of the table, I understand that totally. We have a unique fan base which makes us the club we have got, and of course they are anxious.”

Two weeks on and that situation has seemingly taken a worse turn.

Relegation risk

Despite Steve Bruce’s attitude against the possibility of relegation, should the worst case scenario occur and Newcastle do find themselves in the Championship, they could also discover a potential financial disaster looming.

What some clubs insert into player contracts is clauses that if they are to be relegated then their wages will be reduced to coincide with the loss of revenue from playing in the Premier League.

This then allows the club to better deal with the negative realities of relegation and places them in greater stead to react with the hope of immediate promotion.

However, The Times has reported that supposedly Newcastle do not have such clauses in many of their players’ contracts. The reason given for this is so that players would not be put off from joining the club knowing that they would be arriving at a team which could in effect be relegated.

Prior to the arrivals of Joelinton, Allan Saint-Maximin, Callum Wilson and Ryan Fraser, the Magpies had a wage bill of £96.8 million.

With Fulham’s win at Anfield, the gap to the drop is now just one point. Maybe Bruce will be hit with the hard reality of the league table and that things are not simply ‘okay.’

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This article was edited by Robert Fosterman.

Source: 101greatgoals.com