Kyril Louis-Dreyfus outlines his vision for Sunderland's future

Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of talk of 1973 – how could there not have been when Jimmy Montgomery was watching on from stage right, chipping in with an occasional memory – as well as tales of Brian Clough, Don Revie, Raich Carter and the ‘Team of all the Talents’. Last year’s play-off final success at Wembley, cherished for all that it might have come in the third tier, also got a mention.

As a 25-year-old native of Switzerland, who was born in Zurich, schooled in the United States and raised for a large part of his life in southern France, Louis-Dreyfus readily admits he still learning about Sunderland’s history. He has made it something of a mission to educate himself about the club he now leads, but ultimately, he also accepts it cannot be his priority. Revelling in the past is all well and good, but as the Black Cats’ majority shareholder, Louis-Dreyfus’ chief responsibility is to shape Sunderland’s future. It is not something he takes lightly.

“I know I have this responsibility, and I take it very, very seriously,” said Louis-Dreyfus, in one of his first media interviews since acquiring an initial controlling stake in Sunderland almost two years ago. “I go to all the games and I’m around the club and the city a lot, so I feel what people are feeling.

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“I see people getting up at 4am to go to an away game and not getting back home until after midnight. I know what the club means to then. More than anything else, I feel I have a responsibility to them, which I take very seriously, and we’re giving everything to make sure the next three to five years are as successful as we can make them.”

Success in football is relative. For all that Louis-Dreyfus might be part of a family dynasty that is worth billions, Sunderland will not be reclaiming their status as the ‘Bank of England club’. They are also unlikely to be emulating the team Louis-Dreyfus was previously involved with, Marseille, by taking up a place in the Champions League.

Sunderland majority shareholder Kyril Louis-Dreyfus (Image: Ian Horrocks)

They are back in the Championship though, securely ensconced in a mid-table position as the season approaches its halfway stage, and given the shambolic situation Louis-Dreyfus inherited when he bought out Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven two Christmases ago, that is an achievement not to be sniffed at.

Both on and off the pitch, Sunderland’s erudite owner has overseen a radical transformation. Not, however, that it is anything like complete.

“I have to say that we’re still very, very far off where we need to be,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “We’re still in the very early stages. It’s still early days and you can always learn, and we’ve made thousands of mistakes we can learn from.

“Coming from the top end of French football, we were a long way off when we first came in. We’ve come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

“But I’m still so pleased. We’ve had moments with specific things where we’ve thought, ‘Six months ago, we wouldn’t have been able to handle that this way’. We’ve been catching up with the other Championship clubs because we were a long way behind – now, we’re slowly getting there, and it’s then about trying to go on and surpass them.

“I would never want to disrespect the other 23 clubs in this division, many of whom have been here a long time. You’re not going to overtake them overnight – if it was that easy, anyone could do it every year – but the main thing is to catch up, and then find the ways to outperform them.”

In the immediate aftermath of his takeover being completed, Louis-Dreyfus admits his main objective was to repair the long-term decline that had accompanied Sunderland’s slide into the third tier. Whole departments needed to be rebuilt, while the team on the pitch was also in need of a radical overhaul.

That process of incremental improvement continues, but both on and off the field, the club has progressed to a point where comprehensive surgery is no longer required. The first-team group, while still in need of refinement in a number of key areas, has shown it can be competitive in the Championship. Just as importantly, Louis-Dreyfus’ executive-level overhaul is also bearing fruit, with commercial incomes growing under the watchful eye of chief operating officer Steve Davison and a clear recruitment and player development model having been established by sporting director Kristjaan Speakman.

“The tip of the iceberg is the first team, but then you have everything else behind the scenes,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “There’s been a huge amount of work behind the scenes, which I hope yields a lot of success in the next five to 15 years, and that’s not yet visible. For example, we’ve just hired our last member of staff in the football department (academy manager) so for the first time, we have a full staff – these are the pieces of the jigsaw that we think will bring us results in the future.

“There was a need for a lot of change in the first team, and we’ve seen that no matter how much you spend, it’s never easy to bring in ten or 12 players and immediately start winning. To get out of the division in our first year (of ownership), and to be competing this season, is very satisfying, but we want to keep up the same rate of improvement.

“When we came in, it was a very difficult situation, and I said to the people in the building that we just needed to concentrate on improving week by week, even if it was just one or two things where we could make the difference.

“I want to keep that up, and I think we’ve had that linear improvement, so now it’s about making sure we don’t stagnate. It’s not easy, but that’s our aim.”

In the medium to long term, Louis-Dreyfus wants to be presiding over a stable, Premier League club that is largely self-sufficient thanks to its ability to recruit and develop young players. In the short term, that cannot be achieved without winning promotion, so while there is an acceptance that the current campaign is largely about stabilisation after exiting League One via the play-offs last season, there is also a desire to start mounting a push towards the upper reaches of the second tier.

“The division is very tight, and we all know what a good run of form can do to your position in the league, good or bad,” said Louis-Dreyfus. “For me, it’s about continuous improvement more than anything else, we want to have solid foundations that get us up.

“We would all love to finish in the top two this season and, of course, with where we are at the moment, it’s not totally unimaginable that we could do that, but at the same time, we’re trying to get to a level where we have the structure and a level of working in place where we can compete for promotion every season. That is the main goal.”