Kyril Louis-Dreyfus hopes the days of mass turnovers of players at Sunderland are over as the January transfer window approaches. Swiss billionaire heir Louis-Dreyfus became chairman at Sunderland two years ago in February, and during his spell in charge nine senior players arrived in the summer of 2021 with another six joining in January, followed by ten more new additions last summer.
In his first transfer window, wholesale change was necessary as the club needed to replace a large number of players who moved on, while this summer's influx was prompted by the club's promotion to the Championship.
"Since I came in, we have had a very peculiar situation - before my first season we had only 12 players left at the club so it was about bringing in big numbers of new players which we had to do," said Louis-Dreyfus, in his first interview with local media since his arrival.
"Then we got promoted which immediately means you need to bring in again a lot of new players bcause you have just moved up the leagues. My big hope is that, unless we get promoted to the Premier League in six months, we will be able now to recruit a less amount and concentrate on the specific profiles that are exactly what we need rather than having to find ten or 12 players.
"We've got a very good core of players now, and it is about every window - whether it is January or in the summer - identifying where we can get better, but really specifically rather than bringing in six, seven, or eight players all at once."
Aside from signing players able to cope with the step up to the Championship, Sunderland also had to contend with a change of head coach in August when Alex Neil left to take over at Stoke City with Tony Mowbray installed as his successor. Louis-Dreyfus has been pleased with the impact Mowbray has made, taking the reins and guiding the club into midtable as the season reaches its halfway point this weekend, despite missing several key players through injury for extended spells.
He said: "Every club has a lot of context that makes their job [that of the head coach] very difficult. Here he [Mowbray] came in with an open mentality. We knew we had injuries but we didn't give up and say 'we're missing key players, let's just wait for them to come back'.
"We were creative, we tried to change things around to try and pick up results which we have done in many games which was very pleasing. To come into a new group with no pre-season is not an easy context but so far it is going really well and we are really pleased with how it has been going so far."
Aside from recruitment of players and head coaches, Louis-Dreyfus has also focused on bringing in scouting and analysis staff, along with filling coaching roles throughout the club and bringing in Robin Nicholls to head up the club's academy.
"The first team is the tip of the iceberg, but then there is everything behind it," said the owner.
"Behind the scenes there has been a lot of good work done which I hope will yield a lot of success in the next five to 15 years. We've just now finally hired our last person in the football department so we have a fully-staffed department. The long term things are going in the right direction which will hopefully yield success in the future."
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