Premier League relegation: How the drop could destroy Newcastle and Sunderland

The two North East teams sit dangerously in the bottom three

Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce reacts on the touchline (AFP/Getty)

In every corner of the North East they talk of relegation. They talk of its impact and whether there is enough fight to avoid it for either Sunderland or Newcastle and whether there is the capacity to bounce back.

On Friday morning, a headline in the South Tyneside newspaper, the Shields Gazette read, ‘Why Sunderland won’t face wage-bill Armageddon of Newcastle if relegated.’

Sunderland have, as a legacy of their former chairman Niall Quinn and the 70 job cuts that came with their last fall from the Premier League, a 40 per cent reduction in player salary should they be relegated.

It is a celebrated fact because Newcastle, certainly in the case of Jonjo Shelvey and Andros Townsend, who were signed in January, do not. It is now at that level.

Newcastle’s wage to turnover ratio was shown to be at an impressive 50 per cent in their most recently published accounts. Sunderland’s was much higher, above 70 per cent. You do not, however, need to look too far into the accounts of either club to realise relegation will have a devastating effect.

Both rely heavily on the television income that will be slashed, Newcastle’s average attendance of 49,710 and Sunderland’s 42,464 will drop, most likely beyond 10,000 per club.

There is a new hotel being built next to the Stadium of Light in Sunderland. The people of Newcastle whose city was once voted the eighth best place for a night out in the world will feel less like partying outside of the Premier League, the Scandinavians who ferry in on match day to St James’ Park may find better things to do.

Economically, the region will suffer.

For the Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce, the mask in recent weeks has only slipped once, in the company of a small group of journalists, when he admitted he was absolutely devastated at the 93rd minute winning goal that Martin Olsson struck for Norwich against Newcastle.

It has been one of the most signifiant losses that he has endured since he became manager of Sunderland. The gap to safety is now four points for his club as a consequence, and games are running out quickly.

There remains a calming confidence about Allardyce. He bought four players in January to alter the physicality of his squad and his players, he insists, are working to his methods. He has two giant centre halves and a big holding midfielder and traditionally, for an Allardyce team, Sunderland are hard to beat. That has been the message.

It does not quite reveal the full picture statistically. There have been six draws in the last 11 games, which backs up a picture of solidity, but the more alarming element of that sequence has been the single victory, recorded back in mid February, when Sunderland beat Manchester United at the Stadium of Light. It moved Sunderland to within a point of Norwich, who were, as now, fourth bottom in the table, and sixth bottom Bournemouth were within sights, five points above his side.

The gap to Bournemouth, which has grown to 14 points tells its own story. The goal for Olsson means Sunderland dare not even consider defeat at Carrow Road this afternoon. Defeat today would extend the gap to seven points, and with just three games left for Allardyce after that, it is a result he simply cannot contemplate.

“There’s a bottle half empty and a bottle half full,” he said. “But my focus to the players is on getting a clean sheet. That would be the most important thing, to get the clean sheet, because if you do that, you don’t have to play well, you just have to score one goal.

“I think you have to put both scenarios across to the players at certain times. There have been points during this run where you say to the lads, ‘If you carry on like this, you will win’. But you’ve got to cut the mistakes out to do that.

“It’s very difficult to criticise your players too much when they have played well but haven’t won. It’s incredibly frustrating thinking about the game the day after, and thinking, ‘My God, how close were we to winning?’

“We’ve got to put it right, and we’ve got to start at Norwich. If we cut out these mistakes at Norwich, we’ll have a better chance of winning.”

That is Allardyce without emotion.

With it, he paints a different picture, and in that, we are back to the Armageddon which looms for either his club, rivals Newcastle, or Norwich.

Rafa Benitez reacts during Newcastle'a 3-1 defeat by Southampton (Getty)

“Statistics will tell you that it’s very difficult for a team to come straight back up,” he added. “If you look at the three teams that get relegated each year, then over the last 15 years, very few of them have come up first time. I did that analysis when I went to West Ham in 2011, and I thought, ‘S**t – I wish I’d looked at this before I took the job on’.

“We did get back, but there’s not too many who do. Relegation has a huge effect over a football club this size or the size of West Ham that needs some really delicate managing.

“You need to have lots of outs, lots of ins and lots of cut backs, and lots of very miserable people who you have to reinvigorate and regenerate to create a feel-good factor to get the club back to where it wants to be.

“If the players moved on, I don’t think they’d get a better club than this one. That includes the lads who joined in January. Even though Kirchhoff was at Bayern Munich, he wasn’t really playing for them. They didn’t think he was quite good enough.

“They are all trying to keep this club in the Premier League, but we have an element of not being able to win football matches, which needs to be put right.

“They’ve tried extremely hard, and committed all that they’ve got to try to win those games. We just haven’t been able to see them through. Maybe we need a bit of luck.

You should always surround yourself with lucky people. Dean Holdsworth is one of them.

“I went to the races with Dean Holdsworth eight times and I gave Dean Holdsworth my money every time and he never stopped winning. You go to the races on a race day, you give Dean a hundred quid and at the end of the day he says here’s £200. You say, thanks Dean, you can be my mate.”

It is to such strands on which safety now hangs.