Club chairman Niall Quinn has revealed that from now on, Sunderland will not be in the vulnerable position of a few years ago - which Newcastle are in now - of being relegated with a host of players on contracts which guarantee them massive wages in the lower divisions.

Those contracts can push a club towards bankruptcy, and Quinn says Sunderland have now reached a position where they can ask new signings to show how much they want to play for the club by being happy to agree practical contracts.

"We try very hard when it comes to relegation clauses for the players.

"We've probably got to the stage where we're 90 per cent there, and for new players now, we would insist on it.

"That would tell you what their intentions are across the table too.

"I was probably guilty as a player - I didn't understand the mechanics behind the scenes for a football club.

"You would go in looking for your deal and all the rest.

"I'm not trying to put them in a weakened position, but there should be some consideration given to 'yes, I'm going to give you all this money, but if you fail, next year I can't'.

"It's as simple as that, and even if it cost us a signing, I would stick with that.

"A top-four club needn't have it. Man City maybe needn't have it, but because of where we are on our journey we have to be smart."

Quinn says the club will never experience under his stewardship the heartache it experienced when dozens of staff lost their jobs in the wake of relegation in 2003.

And he said that even if Sunderland had gone down on the last day of last season instead of Newcastle and Middlesbrough, the collateral damage at the Stadium of Light would have been kept to a minimum.

"We had it planned for quite a while that relegation would be put more on the players than the staff here," he revealed.

"It wouldn't have been a knee-jerk reaction to do that.

"The players' salaries would have been trimmed, not the staff, and we had a survival plan in place.

"You don't feel so sorry for the player who has to go and drive his Ferrari out of the gates. We were determined we would have that plan in place."