Should Sunderland follow Newcastle and sign short-term solutions?

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Newcastle won the Championship in 2016/17 after signing short-term solutions – should Sunderland now look to do the same?

Lamine Kone and Tyias Browning of Sunderland challenge Curtis Davies of Derby County.

The Championship is often named as one of the toughest divisions to gain promotion from, with 19 of the current 24 teams having played in the Premier League at some point since its rebranding in 1992.

Yet last season Newcastle United, as expected, won the title with relative comfort with a nine-point gap between themselves and the playoffs.

Newcastle United players Jamaal Lascelles (l) and Jonjo Shelvey lift the trophy after winning the Sky Bet Championship title.

That was because upon relegation to the second tier, manager Rafa Benitez sought to sign proven players at the level as a short-term fix to fire them back to the top flight – and it worked.

Now their great rivals Sunderland face a similar predicament, relegated last season after a ten-year stay in the English top flight and after a solid start they suffered their first league defeat of 2017/18 at the weekend with a 2-0 loss at home to Leeds United.

And boss Simon Grayson highlighted the problems in his squad that need to be addressed, just as Benitez did 12 months prior.

Simon Grayson, manager of Sunderland.

“We’re trying to work with the current players, but you need versatility for different systems,” Grayson told the Sunderland Echo.

“When you’re at home and you are losing, you need to change things. You saw that on Saturday where we changed the formation and changed the personnel to try to make something happen.

“When you look at some squads in the Championship, games will be won from the bench. Maybe we don’t have lads on the bench with the same experience that some of the other sides have.”

It is why prospective deals for West Ham United’s Robert Snodgrass and Ross McCormack of Aston Villa, as reported by the same newspaper, make a lot of sense.

By September 7, Snodgrass will be 30 and McCormack will be 31 and they hardly represent a long-term plan, but could provide the immediate impact to get the Black Cats out of the division.

The problem is, as Newcastle are now finding out, is that players that provide short-term fixes in the Championship often can’t cut it in the Premier League and the rebuilding process has to start all over again.