In: Jozy Altidore (AZ Alkmaar, £6.5m), Emanuele Giaccherini (Juventus, £6.5m), Vito Mannone (Arsenal, £1.5m), David Moberg Karlsson (IFK Gothenburg, £1.5m), El-Hadji Ba (Le Havre, £380,000), Duncan Watmore (Altrincham, Undisclosed), Cabral (Basel, Free), Modibo Diakité (Lazio, Free), Valentin Roberge (Maritimo, Free), Ondrej Celustka (Trabzonspor, Loan).

Out: Simon Mignolet (Liverpool, £9m), Ahmed Elmohamady (Hull, £2m), James McClean (Wigan, £1m), Matt Kilgallon (Blackburn, Free), Adam Reed (Burton, Free), Ryan Noble (Burnley, Free), Danny Graham (Hull City, Loan), Jordan Pickford (Burton Albion, Loan), Alfred N'Diaye (Eskisehirspor, Loan).
Released: Titus Bramble, Anthony Callaghan, Wade Joyce, Matt Kilgallon Ben Wilson.

Prediction: 20th

A billionaire buys your club, and spends £200m on a new team of world-class players; the expectation is that they’ll win everything instantly. They don’t of course, it takes time to gel, time to turn that group of players in to a team.

What’s happened at Sunderland this summer is the LIDL version of that scenario. Paolo Di Canio obviously didn’t rate much of what he saw at the Stadium of Light last season and has set about a complete overhaul of his squad. But Giaccherini aside, how many of these new faces will actually turn out to be Premier League quality? New doesn’t necessarily mean better, and I can’t see this ending well.

Fully expecting a meltdown from Di Canio at some point too. Going down.

wow bold prediction, get down the bookies you will get a great price on them finishing last. i'm not sure with sunderland i think they will struggle, but all depends if they can find the goals this season, apart from fletcher they were shocking in front of goal. i reckon 15th place

Ha! I've had plenty of grief on twitter today as a result of this. It was a toss-up between them doing really well or failing miserably, one extreme to the other. Obviously I've gone with the 2nd option but who knows, they might prove me wrong.

Whatever happens, it'll be interesting.

lol, i bet there were some happy sunderland fans. it's true their are a few teams this season that are kinda wildcards who you don't know what to expect. i wouldn't be shocked if sunderland came 10th or last.

Some brilliant quotes from Martin O'Neill at his ROI press conference here, laying right in to his Sunderland successor Paolo Di Canio and calling him a "managerial charlatan".

"Paolo stepped in there and basically, as weeks ran on, he ran out of excuses. I had a wry smile to myself."

"It's like a 27-year-old manager stepping in and the first thing you do is criticise the fitness of the team beforehand. If you've ever seen Aston Villa play, you'll see the one thing I pride myself on is teams being fit.

"What you'll find interesting is that when he started the team wasn't fit for the Chelsea game. Then the following week when he won at Newcastle, not being fit wasn't mentioned.

"Then about two weeks later they got mauled by Aston Villa, someone asked him about the fitness. Suddenly, he didn't know where to go. Because the team, as it progresses, should be getting more fit.

"And then, at the start of the season, when he lost by a late goal at Southampton, he was asked about the fitness regime, that he was going to have them the fittest team in the league. Suddenly, the fitness wasn't for that game but for Christmas, when the winter months set in. You know, I did have a wry smile at that one."

He went on to talk about the ketchup ban...

"I'm hoping at some stage or another John O'Shea asks me at dinner table to pass him the tomato sauce and I will dispose of it immediately. But then if I feel you can't win games without tomato sauce I will empty it on his plate, with the chips.

"John Robertson once said that if every team in Italy has pre-match pasta for their meals, how come three get relegated each year? It's an interesting point. Ability might come into it. I'd have loved the opportunity to sign 15 players like Paolo did. I never got that opportunity.

"I was very disappointed at the outcome. I think I would have garnered the five points necessary to have stayed up and had the chance maybe to have changed the side."

Brilliant. Have that Di Canio!

Round two!

Paolo Di Canio's been chatting to Sky Sports, and he's not happy at being labelled a "managerial charlatan" by Martin O'Neill. Some quotes...

"I don't know if he knows the meaning of this word charlatan. Probably I can teach him, even if I am not English.

"I respect the opinion of manager Martin O'Neill but the fact that he spoke after six months, not straight away, that proves what kind of level he is. He is not very big.

"A charlatan is a manager who spends £40m to be a top 10 club and then sees the club sink into the relegation zone." Think he's referring to O'Neill there. He goes on to talk about the condition of the squad when he took over at Sunderland...

"The fitness levels were pathetic. I had players who told me they had cramps from driving the car. I had three players with injuries in the calf after 20 minutes of a game. Six different players with problems means they were not fit."

It's not put him off taking another job in England though, and there's an interesting explanation as to why it all went wrong on Wearside; "I was too good, my level was too high. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger. I can't wait to have another chance with the right people. I feel a better manager than before. Even if I have requests from around Europe I say no.

"There is no space for me in England at the moment but I will wait. It would be stupid for a chairman not to call me. Even if it's at a Championship club with a project."

"Too good", yeah, that'll be it...

Di Canio is clearly a man of high standards but what he needs to accept is that unless you manage a top-4 side in the division you manage in, your players are always going to be a bit short of the standard of the league, that's his problem in management, bit like Roy Keane as well

(15/11/2013, 21:30)carl1984 Wrote: Di Canio is clearly a man of high standards but what he needs to accept is that unless you manage a top-4 side in the division you manage in, your players are always going to be a bit short of the standard of the league, that's his problem in management, bit like Roy Keane as well

And also that your players might not be as good as you were in your day.

I don't think he's necessarily a bad manager, and the players probably would have even accepted his tyrant-bastard ways if they were winning.

He did well at Swindon, ok initially at Sunderland in keeping them up, so I think the biggest problem was that he tried to change too much, too soon over the summer.

Having said that, I think the "it would be stupid for a chairman not to call me" bit is optimistic. Any chairman who does will need to be bloody brave and probably like a bit of a flutter too.

I am completely unsure about him, I think he needs to adapt his style and attitudes in some way, the problem is as we have said, the players (in his eyes) are not up to his standard, I think he needs to remember that he wasn't a world class player himself, he was a good player who had world class moments.

'Three inside him, looking to unload'



All happened a little too quickly for Jozy Altidore.

Snigger.