Sunderland lost Josh Maja to Bordeaux in the January transfer window.
Sunderland owner Stewart Donald has told the Roker Rapport podcast, as transcribed by The Chronicle, that he is worrying about Benjamin Kimpioka’s future.
Sunderland landed three signings on deadline day last Thursday, as Lewis Morgan, Kazaiah Sterling and Will Grigg arrived from Celtic, Tottenham and Wigan respectively.
Grigg was the only permanent signing of the three, coming in with the money received for fellow striker Josh Maja following his move to Bordeaux.
Sunderland were backed into a corner by that deal; Maja was out of contract at the end of the season, and had he signed a pre-contract agreement with another club, the Black Cats would have received just £300,000.
So when Bordeaux came in with a £3.5million bid (Chronicle), Sunderland pretty much had to sell, taking the money after seeing their top goalscorer wind down his contract.
Unsurprisingly, owner Donald is far from impressed with the situation, and wants to ensure that any other young stars have deals where they earn more money when they play first-team football, but also add more years onto their deals.
Donald specifically pointed out Kimpioka as his concern, feeling that he may copy Maja in breaking into the first team consistently only to let his contract wind down and leave Sunderland out of pocket.
“It’s not a good deal,” said Donald. “It’s cost us by not having it organised correctly. You can argue I should have started that (negotiation) in August instead of end of September but to be fair when I came to the club, Josh Maja wasn’t particularly well known. Every week we were trying to organise a contract, he scored another goal. It was the perfect storm. What we should have done is turned around and said when he starts playing – the boy was on less than £1,000 a week – you start earning more money but we get more years.”
“We might be in the same boat with Benji (Kimpioka), who is in the last year of his contract next season. Doing it after the event, the price just goes through the roof. If we want to extend their contract and they’re not currently in our first team, if they won’t commit to that when they’re not in our first team, they won’t play for us. We’re taking a gamble on them. Are they taking a gamble on us? We’re Sunderland Football Club. We can’t have this again. It’s absolutely ridiculous,” he added.
Kimpioka, 18, joined Sunderland from IK Sirius in 2016, and looks to be a hot prospect for the future not just for Sunderland, but also for Sweden.
The teenage striker has played in two league games and four Football League Trophy games, and Sunderland look set to push for a summer contract extension to prevent a similar situation to Maja happening all over again.
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