When we were promoted almost twelve months ago, we had a few months in which to recruit a Premier League-ready squad.
Our ownership could’ve done what so many of their counterparts have done in recent years: not splash the cash and then pocket the Premier League riches yet ultimately fail to compete. Many neutral supporters also gave us the whole ‘straight back down’ spiel that they give to every newly promoted team, and whilst this was the case for Burnley, Sunderland are a very different prospect.
However, instead of lying down and having our bellies tickled every week, we made sure we’d not just survive during our first season back in the Premier League, but that we’d thrive. We did this through superb summer recruitment and installing a mental toughness and ambition within a club that had been sorely lacking these qualities for a long time.
The key to this success has been ruthlessness.
The club could’ve been swept up in nostalgia and we could’ve stuck with the majority of the squad that got us to the Premier League — but the truth is that if that been the case, we’d be in deep trouble.
This is nothing against those players, who’ll always have a huge part to play in the story of our return to the top flight, but we needed to upgrade across the board in order to avoid the mistakes of Ipswich Town, Sheffield United, and Luton, to name just a few.
Our starting eleven for the first game of the season against West Ham was a world away from the side that finished the playoff final at Wembley just three months earlier, but that’s the way it had to be. No club can afford to stand still these days, but Sunderland continue to charge forward at some speed.
What’s remarkable is that in at least once instance, with Simon Adingra, the club looked to have reacted to his underwhelming first six months on Wearside by loaning him out and signing a replacement in January.
When the ownership said they weren’t content with just surviving, they meant it, and it’s hard to think of many other newly-promoted clubs in our position that would’ve acted so swiftly only halfway through a season.
The club is full of ambition at the moment, and one of the most exciting signings of this season will be one to watch this summer. Florent Ghisolfi has experience in leading recruitment at big European clubs, and he came in to work alongside Kristjaan Speakman for a short period.
In the months that followed, Speakman left, and it looks as though Ghisolfi will lead the recruitment during the summer window. Speakman joined Stuart Harvey in departing after several years of fantastic work — and their departure showed that the “obsession with progression” extends into the off-field operations and that Kyril Louis-Dreyfus won’t rest on his laurels.
The clinical methods used by Sunderland in 2026 will stand us in good stead for what’s sure to be an exciting summer and if anyone in the current squad is deemed not up to the task, they’ll be replaced.
It’s ruthless, but if it helps us to new heights as a club, we can only sit back and enjoy the next chapter of this ongoing upward trajectory.
