Sunderland are in the process of finalising the budget for their return to the Championship - and the club's ownership situation will have no impact on the finances available, according to Kristjaan Speakman. The Black Cats are preparing to make the step up following their play-off final win at Wembley last weekend and there is an understanding that there will have to be significant investment to give head coach Alex Neil a squad that can compete in the second tier.
Chairman and largest single shareholder Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is in control of all decisions, but the continued presence of Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven - who between them own 39 percent of the club - is still a source of concern for supporters. But sporting director Speakman says the shareholder structure is not an issue as far as planning for the new campaign is concerned.
"I do totally appreciate that the ownership question is one that keeps coming up," said Speakman. "From my perspective, in all the time I've been here, everything has been as it was sold to me in terms of how we run.
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"But I appreciate that some of that can't always be communicated externally and that then becomes frustrating."
Such is the gulf between the top end of League One to the top end of the Championship - where clubs relegated from the Premier League in recent seasons such as Norwich, Watford, Burnley, and West Brom are receiving huge sums from parachute payments, and other sides are firmly established at second tier level - Speakman accepts there will need to be some 'expectation management' this summer. He refuses to put a cap on Sunderland's ambition next term, but at the same time he says there will be a transition period as the club looks to gain a foothold in the Championship and ensure there is no immediate return to League One, which is a fate that has befallen a number of clubs who have won promotion in recent years.
He said: "We will finalise the budgets and the detail of that this week and it then becomes very important to manage expectation around what that is, and what we’re then trying to [achieve] next season. We really want that unity in terms of expectation internally and externally. We know how important it will be to get everyone in that picture.
"We still have some executive meetings this week and we will communicate with more clarity after those conversations. There is definitely a transition process.
"We're not going to try and put a halt on any ambition, say that we're going to try and finish 20th, 15th or 12th or whatever. We want to finish as high as possibly can and will give everything to do that, but we've also got to be respectful of the fact that it is a new league and we are taking a new team into it.
"We've got to get the blend right in our squad to give us the best chance. What we're not going to do is deviate from the strategy.
"We're going to stick to what we're doing, tweak it where we need to and in doing so we're fairly sure we'll have a really competitive team. You've seen our team this season with new players and young players coming in who hadn't played in the league before, then can sometimes be a bit of adaptation.
"You've got to expect that, and naturally with a model like ours, the more time you spend in the Championship the stronger you become. Parachute payments make for a big disparity in the Championship, there is a big gap in the quartiles of expenditure.
"We've been expanding our operations to get to a point where we feel we have a Championship structure, which we feel we have. We want to get out of the Championship as soon as possible, just like with League One, of course we do, but we need the right strategy to navigate it."
While generally the teams with the highest wage bills tend to be at the top end of the Championship, there are exceptions with Luton Town proving this season that it is possible to reach the play-offs despite having a budget that ranks in the bottom half of clubs in the second tier. "There are teams who have finished in the play-offs of that league with bottom-half budgets," said Speakman.
"Finances can offer an indication of where you'll finish but there are some teams nearer the bottom with some of the biggest budgets. We've got to stick to our process, be tough with ourselves in terms of where we can improve, to deliver a team who can do really well in this league."
Sunderland's spell in League One has also proved the point, with the Black Cats falling short in the play-offs in 2019 when they had by far the biggest wage bill in the division, while last season they achieved promotion with the lowest budget they had had since relegation and were outspent by several of their rivals. Speakman said: "History is a really good indicator of the future, if we go back to a situation where we spend over our limits and get some decisions wrong, we end up exactly where we just came from.
"We need to learn those lessons in terms of how we take the club forward. Everyone wants instant success and I get that.
"We've got understand the transition of moving into and then through the Championship, and what timeframe we think we can do it in. It's about how we make the best use of our resources."
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