Kristjaan Speakman gives this key update on Nathan Broadhead and the future of Sunderland's current loanees

Kristjaan Speakman has hinted that Nathan Broadhead's loan will not come to an early conclusion, with Sunderland hopeful that he will play again this season.
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Sunderland' s Sporting Director believes that the 23-year-old could make a big impact in the final stretch of the campaign, and so the preference seemingly is for him to stay for the duration of his recovery period.

That will of course also be down to how Everton decide they want to proceed.

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"There's not many Nathan Broadhead's around out there," Speakman told The Echo.

Nathan Broadhead scores at the Emirates StadiumNathan Broadhead scores at the Emirates Stadium
Nathan Broadhead scores at the Emirates Stadium

"I think everyone who has been to the Stadium of Light or seen our away fixtures will have seen Nathan perform to a really high level.

"There's not many of those types of players and we were really delighted to get him.

"It's really, really disappointing both for him and for the football club that having been on a run of scoring six goals in six games, he then gets that injury.

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Kristjaan Speakman gives detailed update on Sunderland's January transfer plans ...
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"But there's nothing to suggest he can't come back from that injury within the normal time period, and I think he's still got around nine or ten weeks," he added.

"So he could come back in at the end of the season, and we don't know how many games we'll have in that period of time because you could yet have more postponements as a result of COVID.

"So it could therefore be a scenario where you're almost getting a new signing for the last six, eight, ten games of the season.

"At the present moment in time we're really open-minded to that, and I also think that we don't want to be the kind of football club that brings a young player in and moves them out at the first sign of the problem.

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"We see Nathan as one of our group so we want to get him back in the quickest time we can."

Frederik Alves also faces an uncertain future, given his limited gametime.

Sunderland are unlikely to end the loan at this early stage of the window, but a meeting is planned with West Ham United in which they are likely to signal whether or not they will recall the 22-year-old, who is yet to start a league game.

"There's some dialogue upcoming with West Ham United," Speakman said.

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"Frederik has had some real positive experiences with us but he's probably not had the gametime that he would want.

"Quite rightly, because he's a young Premier League player coming in wanting to play games.

"But like I've said before, our squad of players has performed really, really well and I think that's a really good marker of having competition in the squad to lift the level up.

"At the minute, we will just have to review it.

"We want Frederik to do as well as he possibly can and if that's not with us, it's not with us.

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"If he remains with us then we will continue to enhance his development.

"It's always difficult when players come on loan and don't quite get the minutes that they want, that their parent club wants and that we wanted to get out of them in the first place.

"But I think that is more down to the fact that everyone has done really well, rather than Frederik not meeting some sort of level."

Sunderland are reluctant to have more than five loanees (the maximum number that can be named in a matchday squad), though Broadhead's injury might lead them to signing a sixth.

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One option is to try and convert the loan deals of Thorben Hoffmann and Leon Dajaku to permanents early, though Speakman deems that currently unlikely.

"It is definitely one avenue that we are looking at and have looked at, but it's a more complicated situation than it might appear and I don't know whether we'll be able to do that," Speakman said.

"Both players have done really, really well in terms of transitioning to life in England, getting into the team and then performing.

"They're both still at a fairly young age in terms of that transition so it's been very admirable for them to do that

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"We'll look at every evenue to make sure we've covered everything and doing the right amount of due diligence in terms of how we put the squad together.

"But I wouldn't say that's something we've decided we're doing at the present time.

"It's just that they're complex agreements at the present time.

"At the present time they're performing really, really well and we don't want to upset the status quo. But we are looking at every option, so discussions will continue to go on.

"There is the opportunity to take more loan players.

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"We're aware of the balance in terms of only being able to name five in any one matchday squad, but one of our current players is out for nine or ten weeks as we've discussed, so there's some flexibility there.

"We'll look at every way of making improvements if we need to."

The status of Sunderland's loanees will remain under review for the window as the Black Cats establish what options they have in the market.

"We're assessing all of those things," Speakman said.

"You've got to do that on some internal parameters, how they're doing, what function they're performing in the group and weigh that up against what's available externally.

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"It's going to be quite fluid through January, we've been reviewing it for the last two or three months but as we know the picture can change on any Saturday or Tuesday night, either through players improving and performing, or a player not performing or injury etc."

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