Tony Mowbray has fired a warning to the Sunderland board about selling off their prized assets.
Speaking to Chronicle Live, the Black Cats boss admitted that he hopes that his Sunderland players can ‘stick together’ and bring success to the club rather than be offloaded.
Sunderland have spent less than £13 million since Kyril Louis-Dreyfus took over and have build up an extremely talented squad of young players, with some potentially worth over that alone.
The Black Cats could make huge profit on the likes of Anthony Patterson, Jobe Bellingham, Dan Neil and Dan Ballard in the future, while Jack Clarke is already one name that looks destined for the Premier League sooner rather than later.
The winger was the subject of multiple bids from Burnley in the summer, while it is thought that the likes of Brighton and Crystal Palace have since joined the race. The former Tottenham Hotspur youngster could cost around £20m over the next couple of transfer windows.
While Sunderland will look to earn hefty profits on their promising starlets, Tony Mowbray is eager to see their best players remain at the club and help them win promotion.
Speaking to Chronicle Live, Mowbray said: “This group? My main hope is that they can stick together and be successful for this club and take this club where it needs to try and get to, rather than be individually sold off and then in five years time people say ‘remember that team Mowbray had, how did he not get promoted with that team? He must have been struggling’.
“I think they’ve all got the potential to have really good careers and I hope they can achieve that here, together.”
Will Sunderland be making a mistake if they cash in on their biggest stars?
Tony Mowbray is speaking for all the fans when he says he hopes our prized assets remain on Wearside, but that is probably still too good to be true.
I personally think the Sunderland board see all of our assets as sellable if we can earn some decent cash from it. But I also don’t think we should be sending the likes of Jack Clarke packing if he has made no suggestion that he actually wants to leave.
It was made clear in the summer that the 22-year-old was happy to stay at Sunderland, but would we have sold him anyway if we had received a bigger bid?
The Black Cats should look to keep their top names to help us win promotion to the Premier League, because this is the best position we have been in for a very long time.