As things stand for Sunderland, a return to the Premier League seems further away than it has done at any stage since the club’s return to the Championship in 2022, but is that down to their philosophy or are there greater hurdles to navigate?
Sunderland’s winless run stretching back to mid-February has certainly dampened spirits at the Stadium of Light and caused a little bit of a reset in terms of supporters’ hopes and expectations, with the club, currently, closer to dropping back into League One than they are stepping back up to the Premier League for the first time since 2017.
Sunderland’s debut season back in the Championship last year left plenty to be enthused by that the club were steering back towards the top flight, only for those aspirations to be quashed over the course of the last three months in what has been a turbulent period, owing largely to self-inflicted mistakes being made both on and off the field.
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But while the most prominent factor for Sunderland over the course of the remaining eight games of the season will be to ensure their Championship status for the 2024-25 campaign, there will be one overriding question which continues to be thrown at them, and several other Championship clubs for that matter: Can they bridge the gap to the Premier League?
Although Sunderland’s season has deteriorated into what has felt like unorganised chaos, one thing which has remained clear to teams in the Championship is the chasm between the Premier League and the next step in the Football League. As we head into the final weeks of the season, the three teams who were relegated from the Premier League last season currently occupy first, second and fourth place in the Championship. By contrast, the three teams promoted to the Premier League last season currently find themselves 17th, 19th and 20th – Luton Town outside of the relegation zone by virtue of a points deduction for Nottingham Forest.
It's a growing issue for football, rather than just Sunderland, with regards to those teams with recent exposure to the Premier League’s increasing riches and the competitiveness of the Championship thereafter – Ipswich Town being the current exception having just been promoted out of League One, albeit they have shown more financial flex given their most recent wages-to-turnover accounts were approximately 114 per cent.
And those wages-to-turnover are of concern to the Football League and the future sustainability of clubs who are fuelled by their desires to reach the Premier League and bask in the financial rewards that will come their way should they earn a seat at the top table. Take Deloitte’s most recent annual review into football finances for the 2021-22 season, for example, whereby they reported Championship clubs had exceeded their means in terms of revenue for a fifth consecutive year at a rate of 108 per cent with operating losses of over £320million.
It's easy to see, then, why Sunderland, and Swiss-born French majority owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, are committed to keeping their house in order as far as finances are concerned – Sunderland’s wages-to-turnover at around a respectable 62 per cent for the same period coinciding with their Championship return.
But with Sunderland drifting further away from a promotion challenge this season it leaves a conundrum for Louis-Dreyfus as to how loose he makes the purse strings to comprise an increasingly disillusioned fanbase heading into next season. For Louis-Dreyfus, since his arrival in 2021, the ambition has always been to achieve success via a long-term sustainable strategy, with a five-year plan highlighted as a stepping-stone guide for the club’s route back to the Premier League.
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Sunderland are now over halfway through that five-year plan but are now faced with the prospect of heading into a summer in need of a new head coach and the anticipation of losing their talisman Jack Clarke who has contributed towards 19 goals this season – 10 more than Sunderland’s next best player. Although a likely sale of Clarke will bring in a significant sum of money, quite how Louis-Dreyfus allows his recruitment team to reinvest those finances will be telling.
The club last week confirmed plans for a ‘multi-million-pound investment’ into the Stadium of Light, a ground perhaps now showing its battle scars for its near 30-years of service since its opening in 1997. But while improvements in the club’s home stadium are welcomed by supporters, who will see safe standing introduced among other things, it is the investment into the playing staff who will take to the new playing surface set to be laid that most will be concerned about.
Sunderland have, in recent weeks, gone up against two teams currently vying for automatic promotion to the Premier League in Southampton and Leicester City with interim head coach Mike Dodds pleased with how his squad – who became the youngest and third youngest starting XI’s ever fielded in the Championship in the space of those four days - went ‘toe-to-toe’ with the two most expensively assembled teams in the division as far as wages are concerned.
And yet if that is the benchmark for Sunderland, it only went to demonstrate the gap they have to bridge to be entered into the conversation with those teams who will drop down out of the Premier League in the future accompanied by vast sums tied up in parachute payments. The question then; how can Sunderland, with what is believed to be one of the bottom half wage structures in the division, realistically compete with these teams?
“I think if you looked at a Dan Neil 12-months ago to a Dan Neil now, there’s huge progression there,” Dodds explains to We Are Sunderland. “And in 12-months’ time there’ll be a different Dan Neil.
“Trai Hume we got from Linfield, I wouldn’t say for peanuts but in terms of the quality of player you’ve got, there’s loads of positives to the young players. Chris Rigg in 12-months’ time is going to look more refined and polished. I think Romaine Mundle has shown a similar type of profile to what Jack Clarke had when he first came to the club in terms of being raw; he’s got to improve his decision making and refine his quality at the top end of the pitch but if you went back and watched Jack Clarke play when he first signed for the football club it wouldn’t be too dissimilar.
“So I think there’s a core of the group the club should be really excited about. Unfortunately, when was the last time over the last 15-months this club has had Jack Clarke and Patrick Roberts out at the same time? It hasn’t happened. Unfortunately, the week I take the team Jack Clarke goes out.
“I’m Tony’s [Mowbray] biggest fan, and I worked really well with Mick [Beale], but neither of them had to deal with that situation where you’ve got Jack and Pat out at the same time. You’ve then got Dan Ballard out for two games, then your other centre-half is out for two games and from the start of the season those two looked really solid together, so your foundation was really strong. You’ve got all these things that have been thrown into the mix over the last three or four weeks.
“But the core of the group is really exciting; Dan Ballard, I think, is one of the best centre-halves in the league, Trai Hume is one of the best right-back’s in the league. We forget about Dennis Cirkin and Aji [Alese] – a fully fit Dennis Cirkin there wouldn’t be many better left-backs in the league. Dan Neil, for me, is a potential Premier League centre-midfielder - if he stays at the club long enough he’s a potential captain for the football club.
“You look at Jobe [Bellingham] who’s a second-year scholar – people forget he should be playing youth team football. The potential is unbelievable. Chirs Rigg is 16-years-old. I just think there is so much potential in the group. What we do need to do, and I include myself in that, is we need to add to the group. But if you take a Dan Ballard, a Patrick Roberts, a Jack Clarke out of any club in the Championship, barring probably a Leicester, or five per cent of the clubs in this league, every club is going to struggle.
“Do we need to add a little bit more depth? I think that’s obvious; I think this period has shown that is something we need to do, but in terms of the core of the group I think we’re in a really good spot.
“I’m not going to say the players we’ve got aren’t good enough because I think they are, I just think a few of them need a little bit more help and that help will come when we get some of our high performers back.
“I always knew going into this period it’s almost the perfect storm for bad news. But I’ve seen enough in games, not consistently, for me to have a real belief that what we’re doing is right. We will all be really stronger for it when we do come out of the other end, that being said, we do need that first win. But they’re a good group and I will throw myself under the bus to protect them.”
Dodds’ fierce defence of both his players and the policy with which the club is working under is as admirable as it may be short-sighted should Sunderland fail to muster up another promotion push over the course of the final two-years of Louis-Dreyfus’ five-year plan.
Sunderland’s finances are likely to be aided next season with the Championship’s new TV deal where it is hoped a lucrative agreement with leading broadcaster Sky Sports will boost revenues with an increase in the number of live games being shown – something which should benefit Sunderland given their popularity with the broadcaster when it comes to televised games.
The TV deal is one step in the EFL’s desire to become a more sustainable environment, throughout the pyramid, so as to avoid the number of growing cases of clubs finding themselves in financial turmoil, with the price of promotion to the Premier League often a key outlier driving clubs who encounter these issues when it comes to spending beyond their means.
It is why the EFL have pursued the need for a football regulator as they seek a greater economic package with the Premier League after it was reported as many as 10 top flight clubs walked away from a deal to provide more money to the EFL in a recent meeting in London.
Discussions were held regarding new elements to the proposed financial structure including talks surrounding the Profit and Sustainability rules which have seen Nottingham Forest and Everton penalised as well as potential pending sanctions for Leicester, with no agreement made. The government has repeatedly threatened to introduce a new regulator in English football who could enforce any settlements and that is something which moved closer to a reality last week when a Bill was introduced into Parliament.
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In a statement released across the EFL, chair Rick Parry said: “The EFL welcomes today’s arrival of the Football Governance Bill to Parliament in what we hope will be an important milestone to help us secure the long-term financial sustainability of England’s football pyramid.
“If delivered on the right terms, this landmark legislation can help fix the game’s broken financial model by offering the independent input ultimately needed to help ensure that all clubs can survive and thrive in a fair and competitive environment.
“The establishment of the Independent Football Regulator will be at the heart of this reform, and we are encouraged that the Regulator will be given backstop powers to deliver financial redistributions should the game be unable to agree a deal itself.
“In recent years, we have been working with Government and across Parliament on a cross-party basis. It is clear there is an appreciation of just how important professional clubs are to their communities and why they must be protected.
"We are pleased that the Government has stated its commitment to the State of the Game Review which will provide the basis for the Independent Regulator’s work in making the game financially sustainable.
“The league looks forward to contributing to that review while simultaneously working with EFL clubs, Parliamentarians, and officials to ensure the Football Governance Bill is fit for purpose and can deliver the best regulatory regime to safeguard our game for generations."
The ideology of sustainability from a league perspective will be music to the ears of Sunderland’s hierarchy given the relative success they’ve had over the course of the last three years, but for the last three months. The concern will be how far these three months have set Sunderland back in a wider context.
In a recent meeting with Sunderland supporters’ group Red And White Army, sporting director Kristjaan Speakman spoke of the external debate regarding the club’s lack of investment as unfair considering the 'volume and frequency of improvements' across the football operations and all programmes - improvements which are seen as vital to develop sustainable and successful teams and youth programmes.
While it may be true the development of the culture, infrastructure, people, and processes at the Academy of Light continues at a fast pace, they are not necessarily tangible processes for supporters in the here and now as their hopes of mounting a sustainable challenge for promotion appear incongruent - Speakman himself admitting 'not every player is signed to start regularly in the team within the first six months.'
Sunderland still have to face a number of the Championship’s other most lucratively constructed squads in terms of wage structure in the closing eight games of the season, most notably Leeds United, where they will again discover just how near or, as is more likely, far away they are from where they need to be. But again, the question will remain: how do they bridge the gap without breaking their structure?
There’s no denying Sunderland have a number of assets at this level which may prove beneficial in the long-term, something Dodds was again keen to highlight when sharing his verdict on the necessity of the EFL’s sustainable approach.
“One thing you have seen within the Championship is the teams at the top are the ones who have got the parachute money – Ipswich are the expectation – but they’re normally the ones with the financial windfall that comes down,” Dodds tells We Are Sunderland.
“I don’t really have an overly strong opinion on it because I want to win a game of football, but I understand it around the sustainability stuff and the one thing I will say about this football club, and I know the model as such will always divide a level of opinion, but what the model is trying to do is navigate the sustainability stuff.
"We want to produce our own, we want to find young players, we want to develop them and we want to have huge financial upside in our players and I think if you went through our squad list – and I’ll use Dennis Cirkin as an example; we signed him from Tottenham’s under-21s for ‘x’, what is his market value? Chris Rigg we’ve developed here in the academy, what is his market value?
“If we do our job right on the pitch in terms of developing players, the financial sustainability of Sunderland we haven’t got to worry about, and I think that’s a huge positive that people probably can’t see at the moment because the most important thing is winning games. But from a sustainable business perspective, you look at the squad and there are some huge financial assets within the football club and long may that continue.”
Outside of Ross Stewart’s sale to Southampton last summer, Sunderland, and the boundaries of their approach, have yet to find themselves in a position whereby the squad will potentially need significant investment courtesy of the sale of one of those assets. That is likely to change in the summer, and how Sunderland go about negotiating that period will go some way to determining if they are to bridge that gap to the Premier League.
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