After several months of talks and back-and-forth meetings, it appears Sunderland have finally managed to thrash out a deal with Toulouse for their star left-back Dayann Methalie that works for all parties.
The fee – believed to be worth around £25.7m including add-ons – seems pretty reasonable considering stories last week in the French media indicated that his club were looking to receive an awful lot more than that for him, although most of what is out there was probably a load of rubbish, and you never know what to believe.
All that aside, I think it’s fair to say that the club have done pretty well to get their man and, all going well, he’ll be a Sunderland player officially in the next few days and will be in the squad for the game against Ipswich on Saturday.
Yet, it’s funny to me looking back on some of the discourse around this transfer online, particularly last week. Supporters online who were absolutely desperate for that “HERE WE GO!” dopamine hit could hardly contain themselves from being hysterical about it all, losing their minds that another day of relentlessly scrolling and refreshing Twitter was all for nought.
I’ve been saying this all summer, but we have got to trust the people in charge at the club right now, and we’ve got to let them do their jobs. Patience is the key, and they’ve earned our patience by nailing our recruitment in recent years, but I just wish people could remember that when losing their minds over things that aren’t necessarily a big deal.
The word that Régis Le Bris used last week was “precise” when talking about how the club must act this summer in the transfer market, and I think that is so important. When he said that, he was telling people something vital – there will be no scattergun approach to signing players. Instead, we have very specific targets in mind, and we’re going to do everything that we can to secure them.
Nobody is denying that Sunderland need more new players, but how quickly we need to get them seems to be the point that is most up for debate, and the thing I find myself disagreeing most with people on.
I don’t believe we are desperate in any position. If we were, we’d have signed players already in whichever position we need strengthening in.
People complain about our wide options, but I actually think we’ve got some incredible talent out wide, and whilst getting a top-level right winger is probably our next priority, I have no qualms over playing Chris Rigg or Trai Hume there. They’ve both shown they can do it at a very high level, and that they understand their role in Le Bris’ system in unbelievable detail. If either man starts there next weekend against Ipswich, I’ll be fine with that.
So what’s the rush, exactly?
The transfer window closes on the 3rd of September, and if there’s anyone out there who honestly doesn’t believe that we’ll sign more players between now and then, then I’d love to have a chat with you and find out your reasoning for why you believe that, because I’m genuinely interested.
If I’m wrong on this, I’ll happily eat my hat. But until then, let’s just let them crack on without social media hysteria taking the attention off what has been a really successful pre-season, which has us properly geared up for the real stuff starting at the weekend in the Premier League.