How Kristjaan Speakman addressed the surprise speculation over Tony Mowbray's Sunderland future

Kristjaan Speakman says Tony Mowbray has proven he is an excellent fit for the project at Sunderland, drawing a line under a summer of surprise speculation over his future.

Mowbray replaced Alex Neil last August and led a young side to a superb sixth-placed finish, playing a superb brand of football in the process.

As such it came as something of a shock when the Black Cats were linked with Italian coach Francesco Farioli, just days after a superb 2-1 win away at West Brom.

The club did not comment on the speculation, though they did privately reject some of the subsequent rumours regarding other potential coaches.

Mowbray himself raised some doubts over his future in the aftermath of the play-off defeat at Luton Town, but he will be in situ when the first team squad return for pre-season training at the Academy of Light on Monday.

Speakman told supporters at the Foundation of Light's annual fixture release breakfast that the club had since the departure of Lee Johnson been working to ensure they were fully prepared for all eventualities, which had enabled them to move quickly for Mowbray when Alex Neil joined Stoke City.

"We’ve always been open that we try to track and monitor where the market is, with coaches as well as players," Speakman said at the Beacon of Light.

"At any moment, things can change and you’ve got to be ready - especially in football. We got a bit of criticism after Lee left but that process allowed us to build that information.

"We had a really good understanding of what was out there [when Alex left] and we were able to quickly have that conversation with Tony, who was no longer in work as he had been previously [after Lee Johnson's departure], and assess that against all of our other information. That enabled us to make that decision quite quickly.

"We felt Tony was a really good fit and I think the proof has been in the pudding," he added.

"People often think of it as a negative but the reason we were able to bring Tony in is because we were looking ahead. In that scenario, he was a beneficiary of that process if you like.

"We’re in a dangerous world now where anyone can go onto social media, put a tweet out, it’s copy and pasted and before you know it, that’s fact.

"We had the conversations internally and we’re not going to go out clarifying every ridiculous post out there, and we don’t want to start a trend where we have to make a statement about everything that goes out there. We’re a huge football club.

"From our perspective, we have a really professional approach as all supporters would I think expect us to have, and we’re geared up to try and be really successful."

Mowbray has one year left to run on his current contract.

Sunderland will have all three of their summer signings available to begin pre-season training next week.