THEY'VE enjoyed a perfect start to the Championship season but Kristjaan Speakman says Sunderland won't rest on their laurels and will quickly turn their attention to planning for the January transfer window.

Speakman says the work ahead of the winter window starts now to ensure the Black Cats are in position to act come January.

And regardless of how the Championship table looks come the midway point of the campaign, Sunderland's sporting director says the aim in January will be to improve the team.

That doesn't necessarily mean splashing the cash, says Speakman, but he says Sunderland's ownership have "invested in every single window" and that will again be the case in January.

He said: “We’ll turn our attention to January, we’ll track the progress of our players and we’ll track the progress of the players we like out there in the market. Then when we get to January, we will make the same set of decisions against the same requirements, which is that we want to keep improving the team."

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Sunderland will closely assess their squad, options and potential targets over the coming four months - which will no doubt include monitoring their striker situation. Ahmed Abdullahi arrived on deadline day but the Black Cats didn't bring in a proven experienced frontman during the summer window, though Eliezer Mayenda has taken his chance and enjoyed a hugely impressive start to the season.

Speakman said: “We’ve invested in every single window. We were making the acquisition of Milan before there was even a bid on the table for Clarke so these things are not intrinsically linked apart from the fact that, when you look at the big picture, we obviously want to make sure we’re in a good place.

"We will continue to keep looking to invest. I don’t think there’s a need to spend money just because there’s a perception that you have money. We can improve through succession planning, and we can also improve the team through external recruitment. We don’t know where we’ll be in January.

"We’ll do our usual set of reviews, our player audits running up to that period, and then we’ll see where we think the need is. Where we think the need is, is where we’ll try to action that in the marketplace. That might involve spending money, or it might involve acquiring a highly-talented player like Alan Browne on a free transfer. That’s the balance of our work."