Sunderland’s football might have been League One last season, but their education programme remains Premier League.
It is two years since the Black Cats last played top-flight football, but there are legacies.
They should have come off the Premier League’s education programme when they dropped out of the division in 2017.
“We were told we had to go to the EFL (Football League) for our education and I said, ‘Why?’ I gave a good argument in terms of quality assurance as to why we should stay in the Premier League,” explains the Academy of Light’s head of education and welfare Don Peattie.
“It would have meant our new first years being with the Football League and our second years being with the Premier League and it didn’t make sense but I think the Premier League will probably say we can’t stay with them if we’re not back in the Premier League within two or three years, which is fine.
“We can choose our own training provider anyway, so we could go with our a local training agency or a college.
“The Premier League are good in terms of what they offer us, free sessions around player care and life skills. They offer quite an extensive player care or life skills programme.
“We’ll do a lot of sessions on finance, mental health awareness and media. We’ve got a chap called Matt Himsworth (a media law specialist) who comes in and does a lot on the dos, don’ts and the pitfalls of tweeting and Instagram.
“We’ve got somebody next week talking to the under-23s about property, and if they want to buy to let, the best way to go about it. We do loads of different things.”
