How Sunderland’s ‘perfect storm’ got them dreaming of top 10 and trophies ...Middle East

Suddenly, the conversations around Sunderland feel very different.

One recruitment executive at an established Premier League club details a chat with an agent about a highly regarded international player who has “a lot of options”. They reeled off a clutch of clubs who are regulars in European competition before letting slip that Sunderland were the Premier League side whose project seemed to interest the player the most.

It was a revealing little titbit. The Black Cats aren’t just riding high in the Premier League table, they’re also at the table for top players again.

A big part of that is down to the alchemy of Regis Le Bris and an artfully constructed squad that has been overhauled in the last six months by one of the smartest recruitment teams in the game. It is a measure of their early success this season that they take on Arsenal on Saturday now talking about a top 10 finish rather than just staving off relegation.

But what has not been quite as high-profile is how the club are building a winning machine off the field as well. The 2024 appointment of David Bruce as chief business officer is regarded internally as a turning point for the club, when the team had reached a high enough level to kick start their rebuild. Bruce has been joined in the boardroom by a number of new hires, not least chief financial officer Mike Papadimitriou, who joined in September.

Big-hitting boardroom hires might not capture the imagination quite as much as summer signings but in the world where Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) really matter, getting your “C-suite” right is arguably just as important.

“We don’t want this to be a flash in the pan, one good run of results in the Premier League thing,” one source tells The i Paper of Sunderland’s aspirations.

“The club are ambitious. We’ve shown our football model can be competitive but now it’s about rebuilding off the field and putting together something that can help us grow into a really competitive club.”

It represents part two of owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus’ plan to establish Sunderland as a long-term fixture in the Premier League, eventually competing for silverware and a yearned-for place in European competition.

While current form has reenergised Wearside, there’s a recognition from Sunderland insiders that it will count for little if it isn’t “sustainable” – and that means making sure they have the PSR headroom to continue aggressively targeting players who can move them forward.

While some clubs in the Championship go “all in” to secure their golden ticket to the Premier League, The i Paper has been told Sunderland’s strategy in the EFL was to do the exact opposite. They invested in younger, less expensive players with high ceilings precisely because they wanted to leave themselves enough PSR headroom to “go for it” when they went up.

It was a bold strategy and one that will pay off for transfer windows to come. With a net spend of just over £100m – the gross spend was around £130m, less than widely reported at the time – they have plenty of headroom to continue investing because that outlay is amortised over the length of the contracts of the new signings.

Indeed Leeds managing director Robbie Evans recently claimed the Black Cats had the “highest so-called cap room in the history of PSR”, suggesting the club’s policy had created a “perfect storm”.

It’s a viewed shared on Wearside, where there was a conscious decision to be disciplined on wages in recent years. Sources also suggest they “won’t be afraid” of further big sales down the line, with player trading remaining a big part of the business model of a club who sold Jobe Bellingham and Tom Watson to Borussia Dortmund and Brighton respectively this summer.

“Sunderland are one of the first clubs that have recognised the importance of gamifying PSR,” says Rob Wilson, a football finance expert and programme director at the University Campus of Football Business.

He believes Sunderland are “good to go” for further spending – especially now relegation looks much less of a threat.

“I’m currently doing a body of work on how you work your way around PSR and the best strategy is you prepare yourselves for your spending before you get promoted and then it turns it into a three to five-year project,” he says.

“Fans would probably go nuts about that if you told them about it because they want instant success but when you stand back and look at it, it’s actually really sensible.

“It’s what Sunderland have done and it might become a blueprint that others follow.”

The club’s strategy for growing revenue is partly based on authenticity. They’ve been able to tap into the fanbase by being “unashamedly Sunderland”, not trying to become the new Brentford, Brighton or even ape some of the big clubs. An ingenious social media campaign started before the League One play-offs and centred on the club’s fighting spirit – “Til the End” – has become almost a de facto club motto as they win games with a slew of late goals.

The success helps their desire to “turbocharge” revenue. Sunderland’s front of shirt sponsorship – currently held by betting firm W88 – is out to market at the moment and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

With the club flying high in the Premier League, it is suddenly “international brands” who are showing interest in partnering with the Black Cats rather than the national or even local firms they’ve chosen from in recent years.

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The club are understood to be seeking a “partner” in the same mould as Hummel, the Danish kit brand who have come good on their promise to give Sunderland the “Rolls Royce treatment”.

From being an afterthought with Nike, they are now among the top 10 kit sellers in the entire country, with a portfolio of strips that nod to the club’s heritage and reflect aspects of the city and fanbase.

The response from fans has been overwhelmingly positive – kit sales are 100,000 and counting. A new way of doing things seems to be reaping rewards.

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