Sunderland have been forced to pay £3.7million in transfer fees for a player who have been AWOL since the summer, when an instalment was due on the £8m signing of Papy Djilobodji who came from Chelsea back in August 2016.

Senegalese defender Djilobodji, 29, failed to return to training with the League One club with Mackems chief Stewart Donald now looking to axe the player for gross misconduct.

Speaking on the Roker Rapport Podcast, Stadium of Light supremo Stewart Donald, who bought the club from Ellis Short in May, admitted: “They’re galling cheques to write.”

But is Djilobodji losing credibility by his continued absence?

We discuss.....

George Dagless

He lost it a long time ago.

He now represents everything that was wrong with Sunderland before the regime change and the sooner he leaves the better.

Who's going to want to take him if he acts like this, though? It's pretty pathetic let's be honest.

Gary Hutchinson

What credibility? Does he have any?

Any player that goes on strike loses all their credibility immediately.

He had none when he came back, but he had a chance to make amends of some sort.

Now that is gone too. What an awful human being.

Jay Taylor

Of course, he is.

His behaviour is deplorable and disrespectful to the club and the fans.

If anyone did that in their normal day-to-day jobs, they’d have been sacked a long time ago.

It poor from the player, who at 29-years-old, should know better.

Awful from him, and out of order on a club who are trying their best to move away from the nightmares of the past two seasons, and he is holding them in purgatory until he finally leaves.