Kristjaan Speakman's interesting reflections on Ross Stewart sale & where it fits into Sunderland's strategy

Kristjaan Speakman says Sunderland will learn from Ross Stewart's protracted contract saga but insists the club showed their ultimate ambition in rejecting bids for a number of other prominent players over the course of the summer transfer window.

The club's sporting director said Stewart had received an 'unbelievable opportunity' in terms of the finances being offered by Southampton, currently in receipt of parachute payments following their relegation from the Premier League last season.

The terms were well in excess of what Sunderland were prepared or able to offer within their current wage structure. Given that Stewart was in the final year of his current Wearside deal, the Black Cats were therefore prepared to sanction his departure if a suitable bid was made.

In the end they secured a package that could be worth up to £12 million, with eight of that the initial payment and the rest to potentially be realised through add-ons.

Sunderland, though, had been in talks with Stewart for well over a year and were initially unable to agree a new deal when in League One.

Asked what lessons the club would take from the process, the sporting director said the club was 'always reflecting' on what it could do better and the finances were not necessarily the only factor in the early stages of the talks.

Speakman also said the significant number of successful negotiations elsewhere in the squad showed the club did have a proactive strategy.

"These things [negotiations] tend to be quite lengthy, but some of them probably attract more attention," Speakman said.

"I’ve said before that Dennis Cirkin’s renegotiation went on for a while but [externally] it wasn’t a big talking point. These are not uncommon things, is the point I’m making.

"Could we have done some things differently? Yeah definitely, we’re always reflecting on what we’ve done and trying to improve.

"The difficult thing we’ve had with a few players is that when you move up through the leagues, that does create an issue with your contracts. Players don’t want to commit in League One because they know that contract is running down and so they want to be in a position that best suits them to move on [if you don’t win promotion]. Once you do, you’re then [again] in a difficult position as more teams naturally then become interested.

"We offered Ross the first contract in January the season we won promotion, that was our first offer. So I think we have been proactive. People will always say you should have offered X,Y,Z. I don’t think it’s always about that, it’s about where the player is playing, the league they’re in, what club they’re playing at. Those are all considerations.

"Players are not just always focused on money."

Asked what the club could do to prevent a repeat scenario in future, Speakman said the long-term contracts that have been handed out the vast majority of new arrivals since promotion from League One were a central part of that strategy.

He accepted, however, that promotion to the Premier League would be essential further down the line to prevent more significant departures.

Though clear that the club would not break the wage structure they hope to steadily lift over time for one or two players, Speakman said that the ownership had shown their primary ambition was not profit but sporting achievement.

The occasional sale, he said, could help that process as long as it was on the club's terms.

"You need stability and structure, it can be hard to have those things when you transition between leagues," Speakman said.

"If you look at the majority of the contracts we’re doing, they’re either four years with an option of an extra year or they’re five. "We’re investing in the long term and we’re investing and trusting in those players. When the players buy into that, then obviously that’s one way of potentially avoiding it.

"You also need the team to keep progressing, and that’s the other way [to avoid it].

"The Championship is a difficult league because you have players on just coming out of League One money, and players on just coming out of Premier League money - and everyone in between.

"We don’t want to be at the end of either of that spectrum, we want to be balanced around where we’re at.

"Hopefully we’ll be in a position where when we’ve got players performing at a really high level, we can get promoted and show that on a sporting side we can deliver what they require.

"It is going to be really difficult to retain someone who wants to play in the Premier League who wants to do that, provided that the offer is right. We’ve seen in this window that when clubs undervalue our players, we’re not going to accept that. We’re trying to build a team.

"People make a lot of reference to what we’re doing and why - this isn’t a business trying to make profit. This is a football club trying to build a team, we just understand that a byproduct of that is that at moments, other clubs will be able to offer the fee, the terms etc. And we understand that we can benefit by then reinvesting that into the club.

"If we were simply a profiteering team, you’d have seen another three or four players leave in the summer. That’s not what we’re about and hopefully supporters can take confidence from the fact that clubs have made offers on players and our ownership simply isn’t interested.

"There will be times when those conversations come about, and Ross is a great example of that. If we’re keeping five players and losing one, supporters will hopefully see that as a good balance. We’ve got to keep moving forward, but every window has its unique circumstances."