This article is part of Football League World’s ‘What does the future hold?’ series, this content strand is where we evaluate and subjectively debate a player's future at their current club...

Aiden McGeady is one of the last remaining memories of what has been a torrid few years for Sunderland AFC.

Signed in the summer of 2017, the Black Cats had just been relegated from the Premier League and were determined to bounce back at the first attempt.

After all, the Championship is a notoriously tricky league to get out of.

As it well-documented, that campaign didn't exactly go to plan for the Wearsiders and so they found themselves in League One after suffering a second successive relegation.

McGeady was by no means responsible for that relegation as there was issues running far deeper through the club at that moment.

That said, the Republic Of Ireland international was perhaps a business deal which was short-sighted in nature and one which the club would come to regret.

The winger penned an initial three-year deal on wages of a similar level to a Premier League club, meaning that McGeady was one of the highest-earning players in the Championship.

When relegated to League One, this represented a significant financial outlay as they pinned a lot of hopes on getting promoted to the Championship at the first time of asking.

That didn't happen - something which brings us to last summer.

Sunderland were keen to challenge for promotion once more and McGeady agreed a one-year contract extension that takes his deal to the summer of 2021.

However during the first half of the season a fallout at the club's training ground led Phil Parkinson to announce that McGeady would be allowed to leave the club in January.

No club came in with a permanent offer, so instead the Republic Of Ireland international joined Charlton Athletic on a loan deal until the end of the season.

In that time McGeady has featured just three times for Lee Bowyer's side, meaning that a permanent move for the 33-year-old this summer is highly unlikely.

QUIZ: Can you name the player who scored the first Sunderland goal in each of the last 16 seasons?

Given his fallout with Parkinson it's unlikely that he'll be reintegrated with the Sunderland squad, which means that the only option will be for the club to try and move him on again ahead of the new season.

With the level of the wage packet that he's likely to be on, this could prove tricky for a team operating at Championship or League One level.

That means that it could be anxious summer for both Sunderland Aiden McGeady himself as his future hangs in the balance.

One thing is for certain and that's that there's unlikely to be a big queue of EFL clubs waiting to strike a deal, which means that Sunderland may be forced to take a financial hit in order to get him off the wage bill.

It's not an ideal situation, but the Black Cats will surely just be glad to move the player on and get on with rebuilding for their next chapter.