Under the current ownership, Sunderland are on the right track!

Today at 01:00 AM

Kyril Louis Dreyfus has been at the helm at Sunderland for over three years now, and we've mostly been on an upward trajectory during that time, but what makes a good football club owner in 2024?

'Spend some money, you tight c***!' is a sentence that's been uttered on the often visceral platforms of Sunderland social media.

It comes in other formats, but the sentiment is usually the same- a demand to spend our way out of trouble and a belief that in splashing the cash, everything will be fine.

However, given the way that football works in 2024, we've seen plenty of examples of how spending hundreds and millions of pounds on a squad has resulted in little to no success whatsoever.

Sunderland's approach to building a squad and developing players is no secret.

We buy youth prospects and alongside our academy graduates, build from the ground up. Anthony Patterson, Chris Rigg and Dan Neil are the three standouts from our own ranks, with Jobe on course to become the best player we've signed up from elsewhere.

During this time, we've developed a true identity and recruitment style, the likes of which we've not seen for a long time.

Five years ago, we had a squad consisting of has-beens, never-beens, and the odd player who looked like they could be bothered to be here. Transfer windows were underwhelming and boring, and players didn't leave for big money because no one wanted them.

Under Dreyfus, Sunderland have been cleansed both on and off the pitch, with a clear path being paved and plenty of people on board and taking us in the right direction.

Football traditionalists look at our billionaire owner as someone being tight, equating a lack of big spending with a 'lack of ambition'. Leeds United, for example, spent more on Joel Piroe than we did on our entire starting eleven during our recent 2-2 draw, yet we went toe to toe with them.

Not spending yourself into oblivion shouldn't be looked down upon and it's doesn't necessarily mean we're 'being cheap'.

For years, this club was bled dry by an ownership and playing staff who couldn't care less about the fanbase or infrastructure on Wearside.

We've often seen clubs spend a fortune in order to get promoted, and either fail to go up or get promoted and come straight back down. This often leads to players signed for a large fee leaving for very little, and forcing clubs back to square one.

The money thrown around in the Premier League is hard to comprehend, and if promotion was to be achieved, we'd need to follow suit, at least to some extent. However, with promotion comes a huge injection of cash anyway, and until then our method will continue to produce results.

Clubs in our division have tried to spend their way to promotion and the record shows that this has failed more times than it's succeeded.

Brentford and Brighton are spending big now, but this comes after a delicate approach to transfers and establishing themselves in the top flight.

A good owner can find a happy medium between not spending a penny on any infrastructure at a club and spending to a point that leaves the club in desperate need of instant success.

In Dreyfus, we might not have someone who fits this profile, but it's a fact that we do have a better owner than many clubs around the country.

Football club owners will never be adored, but they can also never be ignored.

They exist in the game and are as real as the players on the pitch and the pies being sold at the concourse kiosks. Sunderland AFC is being run better than it has been in years, and whilst progress is often slow on the pitch, we're in a financial position that many other clubs in the country could only dream of.