Kristjaan Speakman has discussed the transfer window as a whole, Sunderland's plan on playing with a striker and the new contracts that were sorted over the summer.
GENERAL OVERVIEW
“We’re certainly happy it’s closed. It’s a process which takes over everything that goes on at the football club. It’s such an important thing to ensure that we get the right players through the door and get the right balance in the squad. Overall we’re really happy with where the squad’s at with the close of the window. We had a really eventful start and we tried to be as proactive as we could, and I think that has certainly given us a really good start to what was a window of a lot of change. But as ever, it will always come down to the last few days and how negotiations play out, and how we want to make certain decisions. It provides a bit of a spectacle as well for supporters and fans up and down the country.”
WIN V SAINTS
“We really feel there’s a lot of depth in the squad and a lot of potential in the group. I think days like Saturday show that potential and depth. It’s always disappointing when you’ve got what you’d consider key players missing, but I think key players stay being key players when they’re being pushed. And I think for one or two in our group, to have a buoyant group of players who feel like they can get in the team makes the standard a little bit higher. It gives Tony all the options he needs to make the right selection and obviously get a winning team. On Saturday I think the thing I was most proud about the team was just how bold they were, with such a high press. Going man to man all the way across the pitch when they’ve got possession of the football is a really brave thing to do and I think that’s what supporters want to see from our team.”
STRIKERS
“I know strikers is a topical conversation and we understand that. For us, it’s about trying to make sure we’ve got a flexible forward line that can score goals and work together. We’re not a team that requires that pinpoint number nine who plays a certain specific role, we play lots of different shapes and change shape within games. But we want to have players who can come and do different roles and have different profiles. We certainly think across the four players there that we’ve got, there’s some real variety in there and hopefully that equips the coaches to make sure the team is as capable and functional on any given Saturday against any given opponent, and we can come out of those games on top.”
NEW CONTRACTS
“Our retention strategy has been high in terms of where we’ve focused, and I think we’ve managed to retain some highly talented players who are not only performing on the pitch now but we think they can perform at a higher level in the future. It’s a mark of confidence to everyone working at the football club that they feel they want to re-sign, because it would be an easy decision for those guys not to. So we’re really pleased about that and it shows where the club is at that you can retain that level of talent, and it shows where their mentality is at. They believe in what’s going on here, they believe in what’s happening behind the scenes, they believe in the football club. Ultimately they want to be part of a successful team which we all want to be a part of. So really pleased we could get those guys over the line in terms of re-negotiations and hopefully that just starts to make sure our succession planning strategy and integrating players into the group becomes a lot more seamless. We want to have continuity and keeping those players around the building is important to us.”
FAITH IN YOUNGSTERS
“You can always lose focus around the depth and those younger players. In Matty Young, Tommy Watson, Chris Rigg, Zak Johnson, that’s the future of Sunderland and we have to protect that future. The ownership have invested heavily into trying to ensure our academy programme is optimised at the highest possible level. We’ve had loads of infrastructure changes, we’ve bought into new staff and the young players have seen that. What they’ve also seen is a football club that is going to give them an opportunity, and they feel it’s the right place to be. All the young players we’re speaking about would have had the opportunity to go into another club but they decided to stay here,and that shows how powerful the project is at the minute.”
