'League One salary levels' the hold up in Ross Stewart contract negotiations

Tony Mowbray says Sunderland will ask Ross Stewart to wait for Sunderland to 'catch up' with the rest of the Championship.

Sunderland will ask Ross Stewart to grow his wages as the club grow their budget, Tony Mowbray has suggested.

Stewart is Sunderland’s top asset and has scored ten goals in just 12 appearances, three of them from the bench.

That includes scoring in each of his last five games since returning from injury, but he has just 18 months left on his contract and his quality is not going unnoticed from other clubs.

Sunderland are determined to sign him to a new deal and Stewart is very keen to stay on Wearside, but it seems patience may be required on all sides.

"I don't want to delve into it too much - what I know as the head coach is that he's really engaged with us and he's training really, really well," Mowbray said.

"He engages on the training pitch, if he sees something that might help he is using the voice and giving his opinion. He is very engaged both with this team and this football club - he wants us to win and he wants us to do well.

"The stuff beyond that, it's not in my control. We all hope we can find the answer to what keeps Ross happy and makes him feel like a very, very important player for this club.

"And when we do we get to the point where we grow the team to the point where we can satisfy his needs. The context is that we just came out of League One, with League One salary levels and everything, because you have to manage the club prudently.

“How quickly do you jump to being a top [Championship] team who pays that [level of] money? We aren't there yet. We have to grow it and hopefully he wants to be part of the journey, and when we are paying top Championship wages then he knows that it's coming.

“We have to grow the team to get there. At the moment, there are a lot of teams way ahead of us in this league in terms of salary."

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