Stephen Elliott: Sunderland's impressive summer transfer business reminds me of the time Roy Keane was in charge

A lot of new players have come into the club.

The thing that has struck me the most is the familiar trend in the make-up of the majority of the new intake this summer transfer window.

A lot of young players have come in from clubs that are currently at a higher level than where Sunderland currently find themselves.

It’s exciting and it shows me that not only are the clubs hierarchy thinking of the present but also creating a squad of players that can hopefully grow and improve with the club as it hopefully climbs up the divisions back to where it should be.

Finally, there seems to be a real project and plan within the football club and it can only bode well for the future at the Stadium of Light.

After getting off to such a good start this season, a lot of clubs and managers may have looked at their squad and thought to themselves ‘maybe we are okay with what we have got’.

Not many supporters would have been hugely upset if not much more work was done in the last week of the transfer window.

They would have just presumed that Johnson was satisfied with his squad and did not want to upset a group that are already in decent form.

However, Johnson has still continued to bring quality and strength in depth into his squad and for me it is a good move.

It reminds me of when Roy Keane signed new players in the winter transfer window during our championship title winning season in 2006-07.

We had been in decent form going into the January window that season.

However, instead of settling on his squad which I feel could have potentially won the league any way, Roy brought in four new signings to freshen up our group. I felt he done this mainly to stop our lads resting on their laurels. It certainly worked and had a really positive effect on our group.

One of the signings Carlos Edwards proved to be an outstanding signing and he scored some important goals for us in the run in, none more so then the memorable strike against Burnley.

I’m sure none of you reading this need reminding of that one.

I feel Lee Johnson and Sunderland AFC have done something similar, albeit slightly earlier in the season.

The current squad will be hopefully looking at the calibre and pedigree of the clubs that the new guys are coming in from and thinking to themselves that levels must keep rising.

If this happens, then head coach Johnson will find himself in a situation where he has potentially two very strong starting XI within his squad. This would certainly get other teams in the league taking note and really fearing playing Sunderland this season.

Again I’ll say, without getting too over optimistic, let the good times commence once again at Sunderland AFC football club.

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