The financial power of the Premier League means even clubs outside of the division’s elite – take Sunderland, for instance – can hand out the sort of wages bonafide European giants could only dream of.
If reports are to be believed, a player Sunderland spent £13 million on back in 2015 took home £40,000-a-week during three largely underwhelming years with the Black Cats.
A wage that Ajax – former Champions League winners but held back by the limits of the Eredivisie – simply couldn’t match at the time.
Frank de Boer spent six seasons in the Johan Cruyff Arena dugout between 2010 and 2016, winning four league titles along the way. One year before he departed for an ill-fated, 14-game spell at Inter Milan, De Boer found himself battling with Sunderland for Jeremain Lens’ signature.
A battle Ajax, thanks to the superior finances on offer on Wearside, would lose.
The long-term losers, of course, would prove to be the Black Cats. Lens, after all, set them back an outlay which surely ranks him amongst Sunderland’s worst signings in modern history.
Jeremain Lens explains why he joined Sunderland instead of Ajax
“We wanted an experienced player who you could count on for 34 or 35 matches,” De Boer explains, speaking to ViaPlay. “And [Lens] would normally score goals.
“We had a salary ceiling, of course, and he was earning more than that salary ceiling. So, it is very logical that he does not respond to that.”
Lens, a former Dutch international of 34 caps, then dips back into the memory banks himself.
The one-time Besiktas, PSV Eindhoven and Dinamo Zagreb winger admits he’d have liked to wear that red and white shirt, though he is still glad he got the chance to experience English football in a jersey of the same hue.
“I do know that [a potential move to Ajax] was in the air somewhere,” Lens recalls. “I think I talked about it very generally that, if this becomes serious, what then? It never became serious, so I never had to think about it seriously.
“But it might have been nice. Shortly afterwards I made the switch to Sunderland, and the Premier League was also a dream.”
David Moyes hit out at Lens before Besiktas departure
The word ‘dream’ is not one many Sunderland fans would use to describe Lens’ spell in the North East.
‘Nightmare’, maybe, considering he was one of the club’s highest earners and managed only three goals in 22 Premier League appearances.
Suggestions that Lens was rooting for Sunderland’s relegation back in 2018, in order to ease a permanent switch to Besiktas, certainly did little to endear himself to an irate Black Cats fanbase.
Comments David Moyes, Sunderland manager at the time, described as ‘disgracefully disrespectful’. Now, the fans didn’t really see eye to eye with Moyes on many subjects – ‘it can’t get better than this’ on matchday two, remember? – but this is a stance everyone was aligned upon.
“You hate to think of anyone connected to this club saying that,” Moyes told reporters around the same time Sunderland tried and failed to sign now-Liverpool ace Andy Robertson.
“A lot of teammates here who he played with are fighting every week with a small squad to try to keep us in the Premier League. It’s a disgrace to say that about your parent club.
“We’d paid around £13 million for him. I knew his reputation as a player. But there were just some things I saw with him that I wasn’t sure about.”
Now 37, Jeremain Lens retired at the end of last season after leaving third-tier French outfit FC Versailles 78.