Sunderland have attempted to emulate the likes of Brentford and Brighton in recent seasons – but there is one big difference between the two Premier League clubs and the Black Cats.
That’s the view of national reporter Daniel Storey, who believes that the size of Sunderland and the expectation that comes with the club given its history in the second tier creates an understandable impatience among the fanbase while pushing for promotion to the Premier League.
Sunderland have a clear recruitment strategy and have opened to buy young, nurture and then sell at a profit in recent seasons, with Ross Stewart and Jack Clarke being the first two high-profile cases. Indeed, the examples of Brighton and Brentford are often mentioned by fans as the gold standard, with both clubs having won promotion from the Championship before stabilising and competing in the Premier League.
“They’re not alone in doing that, which suggests that it is the right way to do it,” Storey said when asked about Sunderland’s youth-first recruitment model on The Echo’s Roar Podcast. “I think Sunderland are different to those clubs because there’s both, you know, a historic level of success, and I’m talking decades and decades and decades ago, and also a relatively recent level of success.
“I think that changes the mindset within clubs and certainly changes the mindset of supporters. At both Brighton and Brentford, there was a recent history of being in the fourth tier. There was very much a blank canvas to build from. Supporter numbers weren’t huge when that project began. Expectation wasn’t huge. The difference with a club like Sunderland, I think, is that when you are fourth in the Championship, you can smell the Premier League and it inevitably makes you impatient.
