• Stewart Donald likely to go to arbitration by 11 June • Women’s side face starting next season in third tier

Sunderland’s new owner, Stewart Donald, has voiced concern for the fate of his club’s women’s team and indicated that Melanie Copeland and her players may no longer be regarded as an unwanted drain on resources.

On Monday Sunderland Ladies became the biggest losers in the Football Association’s restructure of the English women’s leagues when they lost top-flight status, were refused a second-tier slot, and found themselves left hoping to be accommodated on the third rung of the domestic pyramid.

It seems likely that Donald will enter the FA’s appeal process and attempt to get a side who finished seventh in this season’s Women’s Super League repositioned in the newly rebranded Championship (second division).

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“At this stage it doesn’t matter who is at fault, it’s the ladies and girls that suffer so we just need a sensible resolution to the situation,” Donald said. “The ladies’ application was one of the first things I inquired about when we took the club over.”

Given the strong suspicions that the appeal process – to be concluded by 11 June – could prove to be a cosmetic, box-ticking exercise, the odds are that Sunderland will almost certainly have to restart in the third tier.

Even so, it is not lost on Donald or Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s head of women’s football, that Sunderland produced seven of Phil Neville’s current England side, including Lucy Bronze, who has just won the Champions League with Lyon, and the national captain, Manchester City’s Steph Houghton.

Campbell, aware that there is now no top-tier women’s team north of Manchester, on Tuesday pledged to address the situation. “Sunderland haven’t had the support they’ve needed from the men’s club for some time,” she said. “But we’re not going to abandon the north-east. We’re going to a put a talent academy for 16- to 20-year-olds at Northumbria University and build again from the bottom up.

“If we can make sure that talent pathway is still there we can then, hopefully, work with a major club in the north-east to rebuild a women’s senior team.”

With Ellis Short, Donald’s predecessor, having lost interest in Copeland’s side, Sunderland declined to apply for a place in either next season’s all-professional Super League top tier or the part-time Championship when, late last year, the FA began restructuring the women’s pyramid.

Although they entered the second round of bidding in March, assorted rivals, most notably West Ham – who leapfrog from the third to first tier – and the Championship newcomers Manchester United, produced far stronger pitches.

Now Donald must resolve the futures of Copeland – admired in FA circles after assisting Neville during England’s recent World Cup qualifiers – and her squad while also deciding how much money he is prepared to invest in a team who lost £424,000 in the year ending July 2017.

“In a few years we’ll have a league that’s the envy of the world,” said Campbell. “But Sunderland are a casualty. It’s tough on them.”