Sunderland has been through a period of change on and off the pitch since winning promotion to the Premier League
Sunderland would, one insider said, have to do something ‘massive’.
They had done superbly to keep pace with the automatic promotion frontrunners, taking the race for the top two deep into the campaign against squads bolstered by parachute payments.
They had fallen short, though, and even if their reset for the play-offs was a spectacular success there was an awareness that they faced their biggest challenge yet in bucking the recent trend of promoted sides coming straight back down. Even so, the pace and scale of change across every area of the club since has been breathtaking and in perhaps the most high-profile departure yet, the end of Kristjaan Speakman’s tenure as sporting director was confirmed last Friday. The figure perhaps most closely associated with the ‘model’ that has powered Sunderland’s rebirth under the ownership of Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Juan Sartori, it was news that underlined that the club is now an operation transformed from last May not just on the pitch but off it.
How the team, and the team behind the tam, was transformed by promotion to the Premier League
Both the team and the team behind the team that won twice at Wembley are now borderline unrecognisable, with only a handful of stalwarts from those play-off wins still in situ.
While Luke O’Nien remains a major voice in the dressing room and players such as Dan Ballard and Trai Hume equally influential, the baton is passing broadly to a new group of players. The financial might of the Premier League allowed Sunderland to demonstrate a touch more flexibility in their transfer model last summer and unsurprisingly, vastly experienced and successful figures such as Granit Xhaka and Nordi Mukiele have emerged as the driving force within the dressing room. Encouragingly, the resilience and work rate of the team has remained its defining quality.
If there is an inevitable sadness at seeing so many of the key figures (on and off the pitch) from those two most memorable campaigns so swiftly usurped, then it’s also true the promotion or promotions that now mark their CV stand them in exceptionally good stead moving forward and are as close to a guarantee in football as you can expect for future interest.
Sunderland’s footballing ethos remains firmly in place despite these changes, even accounting for Speakman’s departure and two transfer windows which have overhauled the squad almost entirely. Régis Le Bris has been key to stress that signings such as Xhaka and Mukiele remain the exception rather than the rule and to see this, you only have to look at Sunderland’s January transfer business: A 22-year-old goalkeeper, a 22-year-old left winger and a 22-year-old right winger. All with some level of senior footballing experience and Melker Ellborg and Nilson Angulo’s case at a good level, but all with much to learn and develop. This is still a club whose philosophy is to trust in young players earlier and more heavily than other clubs would, steadfast in the belief that it will give the club an edge both in financial and sporting terms in the long run.
The operation driving this philosophy is now fundamentally changed, however. Through the EFL era, recruitment was driven by Speakman but on a day-to-day level by Stuart Harvey, the man tasked with driving the scouting operation and with the vital task of building rapport with agents and players. His departure, announced in October, was the clearest signal that an overhaul under the control of new director of football Florent Ghilsolfi was imminent. Speakman’s departure effectively signals the end of this transitional process, with a new and significantly bolstered recruitment department now largely in situ. The end goal might be broadly similar, but the personnel and to some extent the method will be different. This makes sense: for Speakman and Harvey the task was to demonstrate to young players very often from elite Premier League academies that Sunderland was the place for them to thrive, Ghisolfi and his team must do the same for elite talent in Europe and beyond.
Ghisolfi brought his extensive contacts and knowledge of the European market to fruition last summer while the club also leant on its existing rapport with the Sport Cover agency in particular, whose founder Meïssa N’Diaye is well known to Louis-Dreyfus and the director of football. Sunderland pulled every lever possible to produce that ‘massive’ window, trying to combine investment in assets for the future with adding the necessary experience and quality to take the huge leap to Premier League level. The platform Ghisolfi has built is an impressive one: signings like Noah Sadiki and Robin Roefs represented a continuation but also an evolution of the policy which made Sunderland successful on their route back to the Premier League. If as is widely expected in the game they attract bids this summer, Sunderland will be under no pressure to sell and can reasonably expect to command a fee at least three times what they paid just months ago.
Florent Ghisolfi’s crucial role
Ghisolfi’s influence extends well beyond recruitment, as fans who have seen club footage of him in the tunnel on matchdays will have noted. And so the departures of Speakman, Harvey and co will also be felt beyond the crucial task of signing players. Speakman would drive appointments to key positions from first team head coach to academy management positions, while figures such as Harvey and former non-executive director David Jones would often sit on those interview panels. It shows you how the power is changing naturally at the club: when Robin Nicholls is replaced as Academy Director as he departs for an opportunity in the US later this year, Louis-Dreyfus and the board will be leaning on a new leadership team led by Ghisolfi for guidance and recommendation.
Ghisolfi’s role perhaps more closely resembles that of a general manager in European or American sport, and he is said to be a very hands-on figure across the minutiae of the footballing operation as well as its long-term direction. It’s why Speakman’s departure leaves no vacuum as such; Ghisolfi has been the driving force of the club’s campaign and having tried to recruit Le Bris at OGC Nice there is a natural rapport between these two key figures on the footballing side of the club. Le Bris naturally has a decisive influence on first-team matters and is also prominent in recruitment, both in identifying positions that need strengthening ahead of a window and finalising targets within it.
Fundamentally, Ghisolfi’s role is to bring his experience and knowledge of elite level environments to Sunderland. His challenge is to do so while retaining the ethos that made Sunderland such an upwardly-mobile operation, a club where the first team was closely integrated with all departments and where many of the most talented academy players were happy to turn down more lucrative opportunities and stay because they could see such an obvious path to the first team under Speakman’s watch. It’s a devilishly difficult balancing act and if there is one major source of encouragement from Ghisolfi’s opening months at the helm, it is that like Le Bris he has come in with an open mind and sought to understand what makes Sunderland tick. At an early meeting with fans, Ghisolfi asked them to name the players and figures who define what the club meant to him - from O’Nien to Charlie Hurley and Niall Quinn, his research gave him a sense of the club’s DNA. Rather than impose his own footballing philosophy, he’s moulded a side that resembles the values its fanbase prioritises. In identifying elite young talent and protecting this identity of the side, he has so far brought promising continuity even as he implements his own vision on the day-to-day operation.
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How Sunderland’s off-pitch structure has changed and continues to change
Change away from the pitch has been equally far reaching. As with the playing squad, it represents a very welcome investment from the club’s ownership and also a broader trend within the Premier League: PSR has already made off-field revenues vital and the new SCR rules coming into force next season make them even more important.
Appointed in May 2024, David Bruce has since been promoted to the role of Chief Business Officer and is the driving force behind the club’s off-field operation. Responsible for key decisions such as the new retail deals with hummel and fanatics as well as the overhaul of the management of the stadium concourses by Delaware North, Bruce has a broad and critically important role. The team around him has been reinforced in recent times, and underlines the growing importance to the ownership of the Bia Sports Group. This is the overarching sporting portfolio of Louis-Dreyfus and Juan Sartori, managing their investment not just in Sunderland but motocross and more recently rugby sevens - more acquisitions appear inevitable.
Key figures in the group now have prominent positions at Sunderland: Mike Papadimitriou is the club’s influential Chief Financial Officer as part of his broader responsibilities in the Bia group, Tom Burwell is Bia’s CEO who now sits on Sunderland’s board as a non-executive director. While Sunderland currently recruit for a new Chief Commercial Officer following Ashley Peden’s departure, Scott McCubbin from the Bia group has taken on the role on an interim basis. It illustrates the relationship between Louis-Dreyfus and Sartori as owners of the group, and also the new team whom they are relying on to drive the club’s growth.
The task is to maximise the club’s vast potential and reach new markets where the Premier League has significant interest so that the club can build its playing budget further, while retaining the unique feel which powered the last unbeaten home run in the top tier this season.
Sunderland’s successful period of transition - and what’s next
It is no exaggeration to say that what Sunderland have pulled off in the last six to eight months have fundamentally changed the game. Perceived wisdom was that promotion to the Premier League required a huge wage bill and vast levels of owner investment, but reality was invariably biting for the teams who followed that route and then found their summer spending power limited. Sunderland’s approach of living within their means, creating the PSR headroom for a targeted summer overhaul, will be one many clubs in the second tier now seek to replicate. So too will their policy of targeting leagues which some might overlook but whose quality and more importantly whose physicality match the Premier League more closely than the Championship. Sunderland’s transition will become the go-to.
What makes the success all the more remarkable is that they have managed to do so while retaining the connection between players on the pitch and in the stands that powered their revival. Despite signing almost an entire new team from scratch, the best qualities of the side that won promotion last year remain visible in the one that sits within striking distance of the European places and the latter rounds of the FA Cup.
The challenge is to build on this and take Sunderland to a new level while maintaining the essence of what brought the club back from the brink. How Sunderland’s ownership and new leadership team manage this task will define the next half a decade and beyond.
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