As the dust began to settle on May’s dramatic events at Wembley, all of our thoughts naturally turned to how we would approach our return to the Premier League.
Lavish spending didn’t seem to be on the cards.
After all, we’d not really seen the money from the major transfers of the likes of Ross Stewart and Jack Clarke come back into the squad (not in the shape of transfer fees anyway) and the prudent approach of developing young players who we either promoted from the academy, or brought in at low
cost from other clubs, and giving them time to grow and make mistakes seemed likely to continue.
Given that backdrop, I don’t think anyone could have expected what’s transpired over the three months that followed.
To say the club have been ambitious is a serious understatement – but it’s not been a kneejerk reaction to getting promoted. It’s been meticulously planned. The reserved and particular spending in League One and the Championship is now understood – the club were confident all along of being able to get promoted using good recruitment and good coaching, but understood that to give us a chance of staying up we’d need to spend big.
And they’ve done just that.
The whole thing was kicked off by the departure of Jobe Bellingham. He was a player that most of us thought could make the step up to the Premier League; however, in the immediate aftermath of the play-off final, his ambition (or his parents’) was viewed from Camp Bellingham as being greater than ours.
Now, I’m not about to rewrite history here – I thought Jobe was excellent for much of last season, and improved significantly all the way through his time with us. At the time, I would have loved to see him stay. Promises were obviously made though, and unlike other transfer sagas that dragged on throughout the summer, the club stuck to their word and got the best deal for all parties – something, by the way, that adds weight to the recruitment spiel.
However, in hindsight, Jobe’s amicable, early departure was absolutely the best thing to happen this summer, as it was the catalyst for everything that followed.
We were able to get an exceptionally good deal for him at precisely the right time. It strengthened our own hand in the transfer market, and helped us create a team that, in reality, Jobe would struggle to get into.
That hand was already strengthened by the deal agreed with Brighton for Tommy Watson. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Watson’s badly-handled departure, his last-minute winner changed the trajectory of the club massively.
But, again, at that moment, none of us realised just how much.
If you cast your mind back to June, things started to shift when the news broke that Florent Ghisolfi was being lined up as the club’s new Director of Football, working alongside Kristjaan Speakman and the rest of the team behind the scenes. Ghisolfi, who was at Roma and had been linked with a number of big clubs, as well as Newcastle, had a reputation of being someone who means business, and it was a testament to – and an endorsement of – the work Speakman and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus had done thus far that Sunderland managed to land him.
It took a little while for Ghisolfi’s appointment to be officially confirmed, but from the first mention of his imminent arrival, our transfer business seemed to kick into action.
Whether the fixture list had any part to play in our desire to get players in early is unknown, but we acted decisively and deliberately, snapping up the likes of Habib Diarra, Noah Sadiki, Simon Adingra and Chemesdine Talbi for big fees. All young players, all highly rated, all with unlimited ceilings. Add some experience in the form of the free transfer acquisition of the Athletico Madrid left back Reinildo, and our recruitment was still staying true to ‘the model’, albeit an enhanced, on-steroids version of what we’d seen before.
It soon became clear we were keen on strengthening in every position, on and off the field. And look, in some respects, it’s sad that the majority of the players who got us up, with a few exceptions, aren’t going to get much of a look in this season. But the gap – or, more accurately, gaping chasm – between Championship and Premier League is so great that it could be argued it would have been irresponsible to let the squad as it was even try to bridge it.
New, first-choice players were linked in every position – a new keeper was certainly on the cards, and eventually we landed Robin Roefs, another who fits well into ‘the model’ and whose initial performances have shown just why we were keen to land him.
Of course, the signing that broke the mould in every sense was that of Granit Xhaka. Vastly experienced across Europe, including the Premier League, and a key part of a side that had won the Bundesliga a year earlier. Ambition? What that meant for Sunderland right now was instantly redefined.
Arthur Masuaku arrived on a free from Beskitas, and it’s been noticeable that, while we’ve been happy for younger players to arrive in the more attacking positions, with Xhaka, Reinildo and Masuaku – plus the further additions of Mukilele, and Alderete – we’ve opted for experience at the back. Both are exceptional coups for the club, and on early showings have been impressive.
As we headed into yesterday’s deadline day, the summer-long chase for Jhon Lucumi seemed destined to fail. If we’re going to be critical, not paying his release clause earlier in the summer seems a mistake for someone we were evidently very keen on. But another exceptional addition – Dutch defender Lutsharel Geertruida – was made to bolster the defence further, and Ajax striker Brian Brobbey came in too. It was likely he’d have joined regardless of Marc Guiu’s puzzling return to Chelsea – he said he’d been in talks all summer – and he’s another who could be very, very good addition, if he can recapture and build upon the form he showed in his earlier Ajax career.
Lastly, we saw the signing of Ajax right winger Bertrand Traore for a relatively small fee. It was a position that definitely needed strengthening, and a one-year deal with a club option for a further 12 months looks smart business for the almost 30-year-old.
And it wasn’t just new arrivals that made the news. New contracts for Regis Le Bris, Trai Hume, Chris Rigg, Anthony Patterson, and Elezier Mayenda were noticeable, but probably went under the radar a little due to the raft of new faces. Le Bris’s backroom staff, too, was bolstered, with Luciano Vulcano, Isidre Ramon Madir, James Brayne, and Neil Cutler arriving to add experience and depth to the coaching team.
Of course, with so many incomings, there was always going to be outgoings. Niall Huggins went to Wycombe yesterday, Alan Browne joined Middlesbrough, while Patrick Roberts arrived in Birmingham. It was always going to be difficult for the three to get much action this season, but I would have liked Roberts to stick around as he could have been useful from bench. Jenson Seelt, who started the first game of the season, was allowed to leave for Wolfsburg, which should set him up well to come back next season and claim a first team place.
With transfer windows still open across the world, we could still see the likes of Rusyn, Ba, Pembele, Poveda, Anderson, Alese, Aleksic and Abdullahi depart – some permanently, some temporarily.
Dan Neil was one I thought may have moved on, although I am glad he hasn’t. Last season’s captain was eyed by some Premier League clubs last term, and maybe his apparent reluctance earlier in the year to sign a new deal with the club forced Sunderland’s hand this summer in their midfield acquisitions. Dennis Cirkin too – a player who, despite his frequent injury issues, has huge quality, has less than a year left on his deal we believe, which may have played a part in the depth that’s been acquired at left back.
Hopefully, what this summer does do is enable Neil, Cirkin, Chris Rigg, Romaine Mundle and the like to get acclimatised to Premier League football without the pressure of having everything resting on their shoulders week after week. All are still young players with a potentially top-level career ahead of them, and our approach will hopefully see them all develop well over the coming months, and they can perform well when needed.
All in all, it’s been a fantastic period in the club’s history, and the fact Kyril Louis Dreyfus, Juan Sartori and the rest of the directors have shown such ambition should rightly be celebrated.
Of course, we all know this guarantees absolutely nothing, and it will be an incredibly tough season.
But we’re giving it a go. We’ve tried something different – we’ve not gone down the ‘buy the best championship players’ route – and that in itself is reassuring.
The club is on the up, we’ve evidently got big ambitions, and it’s a joy to be on this ride.
