Sporting director Kristjaan Speakman has said that Sunderland’s summer budget will be finalised this week as they prepare for life back in the Championship.
Sunderland earned promotion back to the Championship via the League One play-offs, beating Wycombe Wanderers 2-0 at Wembley.
Head coach Alex Neil has taken his side on a 16-game unbeaten run to secure a second-tier return and with Championship experience already in his bag, he’ll be hoping with the right backing, he can be the man to return Sunderland to the top flight.
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But before embarking on Championship football again, Sunderland need to finalise their plans for the summer.
Sporting director Speakman has said that while there are question marks still surrounding the club’s ownership situation, he hopes to be able to finalise their summer budget this week. Here’s what he told Chronicle Live:
“We will finalise the budgets and the detail of that this week and it then becomes very important to manage expectation around what that is, and what we’re then trying to [achieve] next season.
“We really want that unity in terms of expectation internally and externally.
“We’re not going to try and put a halt on any ambition, say that we’re going to try and finish 20th, 15th or 12th or whatever.
“We want to finish as high as we possibly can and will give everything to do that, but we’ve also got to be respectful of the fact that it is a new league and we are taking a new team into it.
“We’ve got to get the blend right in our squad to give us the best chance. What we’re not going to do is deviate from the strategy. We’re going to stick to what we’re doing, tweak it where we need to and in doing so we’re fairly sure we’ll have a really competitive team.”
A huge task ahead
Under owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Sunderland have shown a new recruitment strategy seeing them mix experience with youth and place a lot of trust in younger players.
It’s paid off in the third tier, but with the big jump up, the Black Cats may need more experience at this level than they currently have.
Money will need to be spent, and it seems Sunderland will be clear on how much they have available to them this week.
The Black Cats will need to spend significantly more than they have done recently should they want to stand a chance of succeeding, otherwise Neil and his team will have a difficult task on their hand.
Nevertheless, the Wearsiders should be hopeful for the future as for once, things are beginning to look up at the Stadium of Light.
