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SUNDERLAND have come a long way since the days when hapless CEO Martin Bain stared incredulously at a list of transfer targets that included Zlatan Ibrahimovic

-  Chris Dunlavy

“Found some money, have you?” he asks academy manager Jimmy Sinclair in one of several excruciating scenes from the Netflix documentary Sunderland ‘Til I Die.

Another, from series two, shows then-manager Jack Ross begging owner Stewart Donald not to offer more than £1.25m for Wigan’s Will Grigg.

“If you’re getting him for that money, it’s a good offer,” Ross implores. “But not the figures they’re talking about, it’s just mental. He’s not worth it.”

Donald eventually raises his bid to £4m, leaving Richard Hill, the club’s head of football, with his head in his hands.

For many years, this was the image Sunderland presented to the world. Chaotic. Amateurish. A club of vast potential perennially hamstrung by chronic mismanagement, who didn’t so much recruit players as sign them at random.

Jack Rodwell. Jozy Altidore. Didier N’Dong. The list of big money flops is almost endless, and saw Sunderland end a decade in the Premier League h a v i n g achieved the seemingly impossible feat of losing money during the most profitable period in top-flight history.

Today, with four harrowing seasons in League One still fairly fresh in the memory, Sunderland remain a long way from the force the club’s size and history suggests they should be.

But for the first time in a generation, there is a vision, a strategy, and a sense that the club is planning for the future, not just lurching from week to week.

Last Saturday’s 5-0 home victory over a previously unbeaten Southampton side was achieved with the youngest starting XI in the Championship, and that is no accident.