Lee Johnson is full behind the removal the salary cap for clubs in League One and League Two.
"RESTRICTION ON TRADE"
"You have to be able to manage your own house. I have to be honest my thoughts were damn right," he said. "That's the way it should be. I feel like it was a restriction on trade and I feel like as a football club, with the due diligence that the EFL take into account - you have to be able to manage your own house. What we've got to do is trust that ownerships can manage their own business. Obviously in this pandemic it's been difficult. I think that there's a bit of mitigation there for some clubs who haven't expected it to go on as long. At the same time you should be able to invest, revenue at a minimum back into the cub if that may be. I think there's an argument for that, [Sunderland benefitting from removal of salary cap] because whether that be your squad members or tip of the iceberg being those players that play in those regular games, I think it gives you options. You've still got to make the right ones by the way. I know myself that we had the smallest budget in the league when we were at Oldham and we got up to fourth and fifth. I always say the bigger clubs often have the better depth and I think that's the real strength of the big clubs with the big revenues."
PROTECT THE PEOPLE
I think it all becomes part of the big picture the way the club wants to move forward. Yes it gives you the option of retaining and competing with those Championship clubs but at the same time you can't overpay. A player is worth what he's worth and you have to make an assessment on the market value of that player. You need to make sure that every penny is spent wisely, whether that be on a player’s contract extension, or a new player coming in, or indeed promoting a player from the academy and given him his first pro contract. Me personally, I'd like to see something like a holding fund. The challenge for me being in the mix and having been in that situation three or four times before is to protect the people. When I talk about the people I mean your ground staff and your kitmen, your chefs. Everybody that goes along with the football club. I believe we should have a fund, particularly for new owners coming in - that money can still be loaned off and be used to improve the football club. At the same time if anything goes wrong, if they decide to not put anymore money in then you've still got a few months to run the football club. When someone pulls the plug and all of a sudden there's absolute carnage - administration and people lose their jobs. The community suffers. The biggest part of a football club is the community and the effect it has on the community. I think it's a big responsibility of ours to make sure we're giving opportunities to young people in the area. That we're doing our charitable work and having an affinity with our fanbase."
