I'm honestly happy for you if that's your expectations. We support different clubs, though, so our expectations are different.I am comparing football fans expectations and their belief of their clubs standing in the game.
You are big club stuck in the 3rd tier with other historical big clubs, you have pots of money at the moment, I have lost count of teams who had pots of money and then the owner gets bored with how much it's costing and how slow the transformation has taken and then suddenly they are another big club with no money, debts and looking at a huge points deduction.
That is why I am happy with our position and expectation, I saw us for 4 years in the top league in the late 70's, we were one of the biggest payers in the old first division, we took on several established internationals, who joined because we offered them more than their clubs offered them, then saw 3 relegations on the trot and bering within hours of going out of existence, saved by 8 players agreeing to tear up long lucrative contracts, for one week we were bottom of 4th division, but have clawed our way back to where we are now, we too have great stadium, a fantastic state of the art training facility and a successful academy and a very good under 23 team, we have the use of the rugby clubs (owned by our owner) indoor grassed facility to train on at their state of the art training facility.
But the difference is, we expect nothing other than to remain where we are and be competitive anything else is a bonus to us.
At the moment, we are where we deserve to be. No doubt about it. After years of mismanagement and paying extortionate wages the club finally imploded and we have ended up where we are because of that. This is the lowest we have ever been in over 100 years of our history. It's the low point in our clubs great history. I don't see why we should let that define us, now. If your academy is churning out the likes of Jordan Henderson and Jordan Pickford, then I'm happy for you. We have grade 1 academy status and they're our rewards. We have a few academy players playing first team football, now. We have barely spent a penny, btw.
I've seen loads of ridiculous owners come and go. You can tell them a mile off, tbh. Why would the second wealthiest bloke decide to buy Bristol Rovers, a club with nothing and in the bottom league? That deserved to be laughed at straightaway. I've also seen clubs such as Leicester, Southampton and Wolves find the right owners down here and once everything was put in place they swiftly moved back up the leagues. That's the kind of professional; set-up that I believe I'm seeing at Sunderland, now.
My expectations for Sunderland will always be for us to be in the premier league. We are regarded as one of the top 20 clubs in England, so I see no reason why that's unreasonable.
