Sunderland now looks the much better transfer than Leicester City for emerging star: View | OneFootball

Highlights

This past summer, Sunderland continued with the recruitment drive that they've adopted under owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, plucking young talents from around the world and nurturing them - many of which are expected to make an immediate impact in the first-team.

There are some exceptions of course, with Bradley Dack adding experience, whilst Nazariy Rusyn was signed at the age of 24 and that is one of the elder statesmen of the new recruits, which says a lot.

Jobe Bellingham is 18 and playing regular first-team football, whilst Jenson Seelt and Nectarios Triantis are both 20 - the list goes on but there may be some regrets about some of the transfer business that wasn't done at the Stadium of Light.

The one thing that Sunderland clearly miss after three months of the season is a proven Championship goalscorer with a bit of experience - they lost Ross Stewart to Southampton, but the Scot missed a lot of last season through injury.

Tony Mowbray was allowed to bring four new attackers in through the door, but it is already evident that many are just a work in progress.

Rusyn, the most experienced of the four, is yet to break his scoring duck in his nine league outings, whilst Mason Burstow, Eliezer Mayenda and Luis Semedo - aged 20, 18 and 20 respectively - are all also yet to score in 26 combined showings.

One other player that they were in for throughout the summer was then-Everton attacker Tom Cannon, who in hindsight may have been worth breaking the bank for.

There was a mad scramble for the Republic of Ireland youth international between many Championship clubs in the summer, which came off the back of his eight-goal loan stint with Preston North End in 2022-23.

How serious was Sunderland's interest in Tom Cannon?

It showed that Cannon was ready to take a leap of faith away from Goodison Park and gamble on himself, and in July it was reported by Alan Nixon that Sunderland were going to bid £3 million plus add-ons for his services.

At that time though, Everton weren't particularly interested in selling Cannon, and it looked as though they would just loan him out instead - something which Sunderland weren't as keen on.

In the final week of the transfer window though, new clubs came into the mix, with Middlesbrough submitting an offer and it was claimed by Nixon that Sunderland were coming back to the table.

Ultimately, Cannon would sign for Leicester City late on deadline day for a fee that could rise to £7.5 million in the future - it's debatable as to whether the Black Cats could have paid something in that region but he could have been worth going the extra mile for.

Did Tom Cannon make the wrong transfer move this summer?

For Cannon though, it has been a frustrating start to life at the King Power Stadium, and he arrived at the Foxes already injured with a back stress fracture.

Cannon has since recovered though, but in the three matches he has been available for since mid-November, he has failed to come off the bench, with Enzo Maresca preferring to rotate Jamie Vardy and Kelechi Iheanacho and not give the 20-year-old a chance.

The Italian likes to stick to the same system regardless, so it's unlikely that more than two strikers will get on the pitch at once - that could be bad news for Cannon for the rest of the 2023-24 season.

With the woes of Sunderland's current strike-force though, Cannon may have made the wrong move despite the fact he will be on good money and is likely to be back in the Premier League next season.

He would have probably slipped straight into the starting 11 when fit under Mowbray, and he'd be getting quality service from Jack Clarke and Patrick Roberts.

Sunderland didn't stump the fee up in the end when it was all said and done, but it's hard not to think that they'd be better off if he was in their side, and Cannon might have been better off if he pushed for the Stadium of Light switch instead.