IN Connor Wickham, who completed a £12m move from Ipswich Town on Wednesday, Sunderland have signed one of the most exciting attacking prospects in English football.

The 18-year-old caught the eye of just about every chief scout in the country as he starred in the Championship last season, and has played for England at every representative level up to and including the Under-21s.

He is a player with bags and bags of potential. Crucially, though, he is also someone who will command a considerable sell on value if, and when, he eventually moves on from the Stadium of Light.

For all the talk of Sunderland reclaiming their status as one of English football's big boys by fending off competition from Liverpool this week, the ulterior motive for the transfer should not be forgotten.

Just as Newcastle owner Mike Ashley has openly accepted his club's need to develop young talent before selling it on at a profit, so Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn also appears to have tacitly accepted that the books need to be much more balanced than they have been in the past.

So while both Quinn and manager Steve Bruce would love to have kept Jordan Henderson on Wearside earlier this summer, the homegrown youngster's fate was sealed as soon as Liverpool tabled a £19.5m bid.

And while there are persuasive footballing reasons behind the decision to sign Wickham, there were also financial imperatives driving the deal.

Sunderland's policy is not as clear cut as Newcastle's, as Bruce's desire to sign both John O'Shea and Wes Brown this summer suggests the purchase of players over the age of 28 is not an absolute no-no in the way that it appears to be at St James'.

But a general trend towards either cut-price bargains (Seb Larsson and Kieren Westwood) or youngsters with the potential to add value (Wickham and Ji Dong-won) is as evident on Wearside as it is on the banks of the Tyne.

As supporters of either Sunderland or Newcastle, or neutrals who would like to see both teams doing well, should we be alarmed by a perceived acceptance that the clubs can no longer be bracketed in the very top echelon of the Premier League?

Is there something intrinsically defeatist in a transfer policy that is driven by value as much as vision, or a mindset that accepts that anyone is effectively for sale if a Liverpool, Chelsea or Manchester United comes calling?

In an ideal world, it wouldn't be the way most fans would choose to do things. But in an environment in which cash is king, and in which the riches of the Champions League have created a gulf that is now so deeply entrenched as to become impossible to navigate without the assistance of an oil-rich billionaire, it is probably the best way to progress.

Lest we forget, Ellis Short has invested more than £250m into Sunderland since taking over from the Drumaville Consortium. It is not as though he has been a skinflint.

Yet Short's largesse has merely enabled the Black Cats to reestablish themselves in the Premier League. Staying afloat each season is expensive, and the Texan has clearly decided that the bottomless pit approach cannot be sustained forever.

If that means buying with half an eye on selling at some stage in the future, so be it. Better that than setting yourself up for a fall that could involve the kind of financial implosion that is currently seeing Middlesbrough attempt to halve their wage bill.

The likes of Wickham at Sunderland or Sylvain Marveaux at Newcastle are players for the present, in that they are likely to form part of their respective clubs starting line-up at the start of next season.

But they are also signings that could safeguard their employers futures for years to come.

If Wickham lives up to his potential, he could be a £20m player in two years time. Even if he struggles to hit the heights, a worst-case scenario would still see him valued at £5-6m in 2013.

Having moved to Newcastle for nothing, Marveaux will turn in a profit if he leaves at any stage before his contract expires in five years time.

Finally, a degree of common sense is emerging from the financial madhouse of the North-East game.

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DURHAM have produced some magnificent cricketers since their promotion to the first-class ranks in 1991.

The likes of Paul Collingwood, Steve Harmison, Liam Plunkett, Graham Onions and Phil Mustard have all used the county as a springboard to international honours.

However, after events at Liverpool earlier this week, it is a South African who can now claim to be Durham's greatest player of the first-class era.

In helping Durham secure a five-wicket victory over Lancashire, Dale Benkenstein surpassed Jon Lewis as the county's record first-class run scorer.

His 7,854 runs came in 175 innings - 87 less than Lewis - and his career has spanned a six-year period that has seen Durham progress from being the worst side into the country into perennial champions.

Benkenstein has been captain for most of that period, and it is doubtful whether any of the county's successes would have occurred without his steadying hand.

Durham has been an amazing part of my career, he said with typical modesty on Wednesday evening.

Surely it is time for the county to pay him back by naming one of the stands at Emirates Durham ICG in his honour.

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AFTER all the controversies of recent months, at least FIFA have their world rankings to fall back on, a foolproof way of assessing how various countries are performing.

Surely even FIFA are capable of cobbling together a ranking system that gives a pretty decent view of where a country lies in relation to the rest of the world?

Apparently not. In the latest rankings released on Wednesday, England leapfrogged Brazil to rise to fourth in the world.

That's the same England whose last two home qualifiers have resulted in a 0-0 draw with Montenegro and a 2-2 draw with Switzerland.

Brazil, who are vying with Argentina for favouritism ahead of the Copa America that starts this evening, must be quaking in their boots.