Sunderland boss gives his honest view on club's transfer model and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus vision

Chairman and majority shareholder Kyril Louis-Dreyfus spoke to Red & White Army members at a Q&A earlier this week, discussing his ambitions to take the club to the Premier League in the long term. He made clear as part of that plan that there may well be occasions when players leave in order for funds to be reinvested to develop the side.

Reflecting on that in his pre-match press conference on Thursday, Mowbray said very few clubs can afford not to consider selling assets and said it was something he believed could help a team grow if done correctly.

He said: "It's every club's model, isn't it? Apart from maybe Manchester City and possibly now Newcastle United, everyone has to consider it.

"I was a big advocate at my previous club of selling assets and reinvesting into the club to make the team better.

"No team stays together entirely for five or six years. Sir Alex Ferguson regularly rotated some of the world's best players out of his team, got rid of them when people felt they were at their height. Manchester United just kept rolling on.

"When you come down the pyramid it's a similar story and you should never be afraid to sell a player when it's right, because there's always another hero around the club. You sell one hero, you can bring another one in and the fans might love them more than ever. That's the way football is. I understand it, and that's why recruitment is such a massive department in any club.

"You have to put the hours and the travel in scanning the world for the players who can do the job for you, and be the next hero for the club."

Mowbray has been given the title of head coach for the first time in his career on Wearside, but insists working within a structure that includes a Sporting Director is something he has long been comfortable with.

"I think that's the development of the game," he said.

"For a lot of years, the manager loses his job and then a new manager comes in with a whole new staff, a whole new ideology for how they want to play.

"You bring a manager in who wants to play out from goal kicks, out to the full back and then the pivot comes in and pops it round the corner - well what if the previous manager has bought all the players and he wants to bounce it off a 6ft 5 centre forward?

"Those players have then got to go.

"So you've got to have an identity - that makes sense to me. Why it hasn't been like that for so long, I don't know. I had an interview for this job and so I fully understood what I was coming into, it's the first time I have actually been called a head coach and I'm happy with that. I think we can develop players here."