Phil Smith's tour diary: Sunderland look to keep the feel-good factor rolling with Rangers friendly

The Echo's chief Sunderland writer Phil Smith is providing in-depth coverage of the Portugal tour including friendlies with Rangers and Roma.
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You'd have done well to even take off from the airport without hearing it.

You may even have been the one to start it.

'Sunlun taking over, everywhere they goooo', still very loud and still very proud.

Sunderland in action at their Portugal training campSunderland in action at their Portugal training camp
Sunderland in action at their Portugal training camp
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The weather here in Albufeira is glorious and very clearly, the feel good factor from that day at Wembley has rolled on.

We had a little bit of a wobble there, of course.

There was that fortnight when the squad looked a little bit threadbare and there was lots of anxious googling. What actually is cryptocurrency? This definitely would not be good for the club, would it? No, it definitely would not.

Though the solution may not be exactly perfect, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus had seen enough to know that the time had come to intervene.

The Sunderland Echo is covering the club's pre-season tour of PortugalThe Sunderland Echo is covering the club's pre-season tour of Portugal
The Sunderland Echo is covering the club's pre-season tour of Portugal

He has largely been able to draw a line under a long period of troubling ownership uncertainty, and that has not coincidentally been followed by plenty of footballing business.

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We have the core of last season's squad signed up, an exciting young defender in situ and Jack Clarke on the way to join him.

A new kit, and 30,000 signed up for the next campaign.

Right now it feels like a good time to be following Sunderland after years of angst and frustration.

Can it last? Well, there is little doubt that there are going to be bumps in the road this season. The club is investing this summer, for sure, but the financial gap to the teams pushing for automatic promotion will be vast.

They are going to lose games, and at times a squad with a lot of young players might take a knock to their confidence.

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Alex Neil in particular now has an appreciation for the gap between the second and third tiers and knows full well that there will be difficult moments.

What's interesting though, is that after four years in League One the expectation is fairly measured.

Supporters expect their team to be competitive, and rightly so. But there is undoubtedly an appreciation that fundamentally this is going to be a season of transition.

That's OK, if the club is still going in the right direction. The football good to watch, youngsters improving and under a head coach who has won their trust.

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Tonight's friendly against Rangers is, hopefully, the start of that journey.

Bailey Wright is unlikely to feature as his international exploits mean he is a little behind his team-mates. Jack Clarke will also not be involved but otherwise the core of the side who won promotion will be in action, plus a potential debut for Dan Ballard.

The opposition both tonight and on Wednesday is prestigious and of high quality, and this is in itself a sign of how the picture has changed for the club since promotion.

This season is not going to be plain sailing. There may well be fairly significant stretches where it feels like a major challenge.

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But it does feel like a club on the up, and quite rightly you feel like supporters want to bask in that glow a little longer.

It's been a long time coming.

The Sunderland Echo's coverage of SAFC in Portugal is brought to you in association with Flex Joinery. Visit www.flexjoinery.co.uk for further detail