Steve Davison and Kristjaan Speakman outline Sunderland's aims for Championship return and beyond

The Chief Operating Officer and Sporting Director have insisted that Sunderland harbour long-term ambitions to return to the Premier League

The pair spoke to The Athletic to reflect on the club's remarkable end to last season under Alex Neil.

Looking ahead to the current campaign, Speakman said: "We didn’t want a high turnover of players, potentially changing the style of play. There are statistics that show certain types of teams stay in the Championship.

"We’ve now a team rolled over from League One that’s retained nearly 70 per cent of its playing minutes and retaining a group of players who we believe can play at that level is also a huge factor, rather than having huge change.

“At the same time, we’re trying to recruit players on the up," he added.

"You have to keep evolving the squad, but we’re really happy with the squad. We are working hard to add some points of difference to it.

“What we don’t want is to sacrifice the main task, which is staying in the league — for the evolution of the business and the club. "After that, we can assess where we need to deploy resources and how we chart our way to the top of the league because, with all due respect, it’s Sunderland Football Club, we’re not here just to take part.

"While we might have to swallow that to a degree in the first season, it won’t take too long for ourselves to work out how to get out of the league.

"For that, we will have to out-perform clubs with (Premier League) parachute payments. We’re holding a different economic position, but we’re holding it because we think it will be successful in the longer term.”

Davison insisted that their had been significant investment in the playing squad this summer and that would continue 'year on year' as the club plots a course to the top flight.

"We have an absolute ambition to never put the club at risk through inappropriate spending," he said.

“We want to invest in players we can add value to. There may well be times when we have to sell, but we will re-invest. We will always be re-investing in the football side. That has to keep progressing year on year; we’re not going to throw money at it. Many of our comparator clubs are spending more than 100 per cent of their revenue on wages and that is not a model we will follow.

“Realistically, we would be delighted with a top-half finish," he added.

"Consolidation is the key word. That would be our ambition — for this year only. We have got to be respectful of the fact, let’s be honest, that we haven’t competed in the Championship for — I would argue — 17 years.

"Because the year we were in it, when we went straight down, we didn’t compete. There are many more clubs suited to the rigours of the league than us. We’ve to adapt. In our minds, we’d do a little bit better each year to get into the Premier League.”