Final day frustration should not overshadow Sunderland's superb summer recruitment

What happens next in the careers of Papy Djilobodji and Didier Ndong remains to be seen.

The Portugese window remains open until later in the month, offering a slim hope of the situation being resolved.

Both will now have to decide whether to return to Sunderland or continue their exile.

The Black Cats will not consider releasing them from their contracts and allowing them to find a new club as a free agent.

Though the pair have struggled in the last year for form, they have a value that Sunderland want to see met, whether it be in January or next summer or beyond.

Besides, finding clubs to pay that value has not been issue. Meeting the demands of the player's representatives, however, is another matter.

If they return, Jack Ross will not want them near his first team squad and the Black Cats will be reluctant to start shelling out on their significant wages given their refusal to appear for pre-season training.

It is a complex case with little precedent and one that will not be easily resolved.

That the players now find themselves with no new club, no fitness and no prospect of getting first team football tells you everything about the advice they are being offered, particularly when there were offers to the top European leagues on the table.

It speaks volumes, too, of just how poor recruitment at Sunderland has been in the past.

Neither player was ready for the move or worth the money they were paid, hence the refusal of clubs across the continent to offer the necessary finance.

Any understandable frustration with the lack of developments on that front, however, should not overshadow what has been a superb, efficient window for Sunderland.

Not since Sam Allardyce brought in Wahbi Khazri, Lamine Kone and Jan Kirchhoff have they ended a window noticeably stronger and better balanced then they began.

Given that they had to build a squad almost entirely from scratch, dealing with a whole host of complex legacy issues following back-to-back relegations, that is a fine achievement that all involved deserve credit for.

Of course, the lack of late movement on outgoings prevented Ross from adding the final attacking option that he craved for a touch more variety and depth in his squad.

But the five league games so far this season have already shown that he has enough quality and character to make a serious challenge for the League One title this season.

It has been a long and occasionally frustrating summer for Ross, but he has been patient and never panicked when it came to making signings.

It is worth, for a moment, revisiting his first comments on transfers in his opening press conference.

The Black Cats boss was, as expected, asked whether his knowledge of the Scottish leagues would form the bedrock of his recruitment policy.

“It’s something that I’m keen to explore but I’m also conscious that I wouldn’t want to make it the foundations of which I build a squad,” Ross said.

“I think that’s something you have to be very careful of coming from a another country, filling the squad with players who don’t know how to win the league you now find yourself in.

“I’d say that about the homegrown players at Sunderland too, it’s about finding the right mix that can win us this league.”

He has stuck to that template, riding out difficult periods when progress was slow and gaps in the squad were glaring.

His eye for players north of the border looks to have brought, in Dylan McGeouch and Jon McLaughlin, some serious talent who ought to be playing at a higher level.

He convinced many of the club’s best young talent to stay on and the arrival of Tony Coton significantly boosted the knowledge of the English market within the recruitment team

With the backing of Stewart Donald and the diligent work of Richard Hill, it has been a refreshingly well-functioning department that by and large has delivered excellent results.

There remains the odd concern, of what an injury or two would do to his front line and whether there is enough height and physicality in the team.

It is frustrating for the club, too, that they have not been able to move on Ndong and Djilobodji, even if it was always likely to take more than one window to truly get the squad in order.

What they do have, however, is a squad that is the envy of the league and already well tuned with the demands of their manager.

It is a long time since we have been able to say that about a Sunderland side.