Kristjaan Speakman vows to solve Sunderland striker shortage in the summer

Sunderland to make striker depth a priority in the summer transfer window.

Kristjaan Speakman admits Sunderland have failed to look after the striker position, although he says it is not for the want of trying.

The short-term striker situation is a precarious one, with only Joe Gelhardt available to Tony Mowbray for the rest of the season following the injury to Ross Stewart.

The longer-term situation is even more dangerous, though. Stewart is the only striker contracted to the club at all, and his future is far from certain.

It’s something Speakman acknowledges will be a concern to Sunderland supporters, but he has vowed to put it right in the summer.

“When you’ve got depth and you play predominantly with one [striker], you have to then manage the others [who aren’t playing],” he told the Sunderland Echo.

“Some other clubs may have more and struggle with the dynamic, and that can also impact the results and performances.

“The profile of player we’re talking about doesn’t want to sit on the bench - there are some of the very top clubs in the world that operate with one, potentially two centre forwards.

“We absolutely want to have more depth, but our starting point was that we didn’t have a significant number of registered players in that position.

“We’ve had to try and find new players to come in and we’ve certainly tried to do it - we made bids for permanent acquisitions early in this window but they aren’t easy to do in January.

“In the summer we had a wide number of positions to improve and up front, we weren’t able to get the depth we would have liked.

“It’s hard to do that in January and naturally we have to look to the summer to address that, because we feel we’ve got that quality and depth in other areas of the pitch.

“We’ve 100% been trying to add that depth [up front] over the last two windows. I do think it’s difficult from where we started to address every area immediately. We’re really pleased with our wide players, our creative midfielders, defence…

“Unfortunately the piece of the jigsaw where we don’t quite have that depth is the centre-forward, and that’s certainly something we are aware of.

“I don’t think there were a large number of strikers who moved in the January window, it’s not a position where there is as much availability, and it’s something which we know we have to find a way of addressing moving forward.”

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