TONY MOWBRAY admits there is an inevitable tension between his thirst for immediate success and the Sunderland hierarchy’s current model of recruitment and investment – but insists everyone at the Stadium of Light continues to sign from the same hymn sheet ahead of the start of the new Championship season.

The Black Cats head into this afternoon’s season-opener against Ipswich Town off the back of another summer that has seen Sunderland’s recruitment team adopt a very specific model.

Sunderland have signed six outfield players, and aside from Bradley Dack, who arrived on a free transfer following his release from Blackburn Rovers, all have been aged 20 or under.

Jobe Bellingham, who does not turn 18 until next month, is the only player apart from Dack with any experience of English football, with this summer’s business having reduced the average age of a squad that was already the youngest in the Championship last season.

Mowbray has previously spoken about the need to balance youth with experience, and hinted at mounting frustrations when he spoke about his position potentially being in doubt in the immediate aftermath of May’s play-off semi-final defeat to Luton Town.

The 59-year-old accepts he wants success in the here and now, whereas Sunderland’s ownership group have to have at least half-an-eye on the longer-term future, but is adamant he continues to buy in to the club’s overall model.

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Mowbray said: “I think we have to be aligned. As a coach of my age, I want to win every game and I want to get to the Premier League. I want this club to be winning the league, but I have to accept that when I accepted the role, I had long conversations about where the club is and what the model of the club was.

“We discussed what we were going to do in terms of signing players. We’d have to mould them, and we had a decent record of that. Blackburn Rovers were the youngest team in the league that last season and we did really well, finishing seventh and just missing out on the play-offs on the last day.

“I understand it. I just think it’s such a big club, it’s got so many supporters worldwide, and yet the ownership model want to do it the way they want to do it, and that is absolutely fine. In the two-and-a-half years they’ve been here, it’s been nothing but success.

“Let’s keep on the road. It’s not a case of me stamping my feet and saying, ‘I want better players, I want to sign the best players in the league to get promotion’. That’s not the model, that’s not what we’re doing, and that’s fine.”

As a result, while Mowbray is happy to be targeting promotion this season, he accepts a big part of his job will continue to relate to the development and improvement of the youngsters within his squad.

Having made the play-offs last season, a top-six finish will be viewed by many as a minimum requirement this term. For Mowbray, however, the desire to challenge for promotion must be balanced against a recognition that the current model means Sunderland is something of a finishing school for the raw, unpolished talents who are arriving through the entrance door at the Stadium of Light.

The Black Cats boss said: “We’ll try to develop our young players to become really good players that everybody sees as top players. I think we have the potential to do that.

“If you look at (Trai) Hume, (Dennis) Cirkin, (Pierre) Ekwah, (Dan) Neil, the young centre-halves we’ve just signed (Nectarios Triantis and Jenson Seelt), (Jack) Clarke, Jewison (Bennette), (Abdoullah) Ba – they’re good footballers, they just need a bit of time, that’s all.”