Editorial: Don’t Panic – Sunderland’s Transfer Window Is Far From Over
· Yahoo Sports
Whilst, understandably, a lot of the club’s focus this week – on and off the pitch – has been on our tour of the United States and building up to the game against Liverpool in Nashville, much of the discourse online has centred around what people perceive to be a lack of transfer activity at Sunderland.
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And I get it – we all undoubtedly benefited last summer from the constant dopamine hits that came as a result of signing 14 players and, in lieu of having meaningful football to chat about, people want to hear about players coming in to strengthen the side ahead of the season.
But there are a number of strands to this, and I think it’s important.
I guess my question to anyone reading this is: do you trust the club? Do you trust our recruitment team?
I’d imagine that, for 99.9% of you, the answer is, of course… yes.
Yet, despite that, there are still some of you who are feeling edgy, I’m sure. There are people flapping about whether we’re going to sign what we need before it’s too late, looking at other clubs around us in the Premier League spending money and bringing top talent in, wondering why we aren’t doing the same.
But let’s break this down.
Of the side that took to the field on Saturday night to face Liverpool, we had 12 players missing.
Granit Xhaka, Thomas Meunier, Chemsdine Talbi, Robin Roefs, Brian Brobbey, Simon Adingra, Nilson Angulo, Jocelin Ta Bi, Noah Sadiki, Habib Diarra, Arthur Masuaku and Omar Alderete.
Seven of that group joined up with the squad in the US on Sunday. Xhaka, Talbi, Alderete and Meunier won’t meet up with the group until they’re back on British soil and, for Ta Bi, it’ll be exactly the same unless the US authorities change their minds on approving his visa application.
Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a bloody lot of players, and when we face Ipswich on the opening day of the Premier League I’m expecting most, if not all, of them to be either starting or on the bench.
We need players. We still need to shift players on – and some of them are probably on that list of names above – but, in the main, I think we need three or four strong signings to add to the group, and then maybe a small handful of young, up-and-coming players that we can nurture and slowly develop over the course of the season.
But, to me, there’s no immediate desperate need to bring anyone in. If we headed into that Ipswich game with the squad we’ve got now, we’d be able to field a very strong side capable of beating them.
Aye, I think signing a right-sided winger is probably our priority, but we have people who can play there to a high level, so it’s certainly not a reason for panic.
Because we aren’t desperate at all, we can afford to be picky, bide our time and wait until we can make the deals happen that we want to make happen.
The likelihood of those deals being available at this stage of pre-season, when hundreds of players across the world are still on holiday after the World Cup, is low. The transfer market works like a domino effect, and it’s hard for those dominoes to fall when so many players are switching off from club football to enjoy time away with their families.
Across the board, I’d expect things to ramp up a fortnight or so from now when players return for pre-season training – and not just for us.
If you look at the teams around us in the Premier League and the business they’ve done, in many cases it’s been done out of desperation – and I think that is reflected in some of the fees.
I have no idea how legitimate Sunderland’s interest in Tarik Muharemović was, but, from what you’ve read, it would seem Leeds offered the lad more money to get the deal over the line. Leeds needed to sign him more than we did because they lost Pascal Struijk to Brighton early in the window, whereas we’ve already got four very good centre-backs and certainly don’t need to pay over the odds for anyone.
Then there’s Newcastle, who have splashed the cash on a number of young unproven players to replace established ones, but they’ve also been turned down by several players who favoured moves elsewhere, and the public nature of all that has been embarrassing for them. That’s all come on top of several of their best players angling for moves away and, in the cases of Tonali and Gordon, getting them.
I much prefer not knowing what Sunderland are up to until we reach the point where a deal is about to happen.
And it’s that point that I think we need to dwell on most – just because you aren’t hearing anything, it doesn’t mean that nothing is happening.
Even last summer, when we were seemingly signing players every other day, you didn’t really know a deal for a player was happening until right before it was confirmed.
I sincerely doubt that Florent Ghisolfi is just sat in his office with his thumb up his arse. The man knows what he’s doing and will be acting in a way that best suits the football club, ensuring the deals we’re targeting work in our favour and for the betterment of Sunderland.
That doesn’t mean we’re tight, but I think it’s imperative that we never overpay for anyone and that we never go overboard on wages, because that sort of behaviour is what can land you in trouble further down the line.
That’s the sort of thing we used to do when we were last in the Premier League a decade ago, and lessons have surely been learned about the best way to act in the best interests of Sunderland AFC.
So, yes, if you’re panicking, please don’t.
The time to panic is not one month before the window closes.