Tony Mowbray's interesting Sunderland scouting admission as young stars continue to impress

Tony Mowbray believes Sunderland will be well placed to cope with any Premier League interest in their players over the upcoming transfer windows, and has hinted that the club are widening their scouting scope as the team grows.

Sunderland rebuffed numerous bids for Jack Clarke from Burnley in the summer window, and it is well known that players such as Dan Neil have regularly been scouted by top-tier clubs over the last 18 months.

Mowbray said after the win at Sheffield Wednesday that Clarke might already be reaching a stage where clubs consider bidding double what Burnley offered in the summer, and the value of many players is growing as a young side continues to thrive in the second tier.

The head coach says that is no major concern to him, as decisions in recruitment are predominantly made elsewhere - albeit with his input.Nevertheless, he is well aware that the club will be tested in future windows and believes that the hierarchy are too.

While the focus will remain predominantly on finding young players in undervalued markets who can grow with the club, Mowbray says the club's growth means the club can also begin to monitor potentially more ambitious targets.

That will leave them well placed should the club win promotion or if an exorbitant bid arrives from the Premier League for a player.

“I don’t lose any sleep about it. In jobs gone by, I’d have lost some sleep about it because it was on my doorstep, but it’s not on my doorstep anymore, so do I worry about it? No," Mowbray said.

"If we sell someone for big money, I’m sure they will reinvest some of that money into a new player. Then, we’ll see if he’s fit and ready to go into the team, or whether he needs a bit of time to get his fitness up or get used to the way we play. The team will keep rolling, and hopefully the decisions that get made are the right decisions, and the team keeps improving and getting stronger.

“I just coach the players we’ve got. We’ve got some good young players at the moment who want to learn and get better, and who have a great attitude when it comes to wanting to improve. That’s really healthy.

"When you watch them warm up, you’re thinking, ‘This can’t be our team – it’s a team of kids running round poles, yet we have to go and play against a team like Watford who have just come out of the Premier League and who have some big, strong footballers’. Yet, can we beat them? Yes, we can.

“I don’t lose sleep at night about who’s going to buy our players or come in with bids for our players, that’s not my job to worry about that," he added.

"It will be the owner’s and the club’s decision about whether they think the money that someone is offering is worth doing a deal for. We might know we’ve got a player who has got more potential than the player that’s already here, and if we can get him for a quarter of the price that we’re selling for, and within a year he’s actually better than him, then that’s how it has to work.

"The club should keep growing and developing like that, bringing in more exciting players for the supporters. Hopefully, that’s how you grow your club.

“Recruitment has to be key. I was talking to Stuart Harvey [head of recruitment] in my office the other day. I think he’s taking three days off, then he’s away all around the world.

"He was telling me the countries he’s booked into – he’s going to South America, then back to various parts of Europe, he’s going everywhere. Why do you do that? Because if we have a scenario where we sell someone for £20m, then we have to be able to buy a £5m footballer somewhere, not [just] a £600,000 player from Ligue 2 in France.

"We have to be able to improve, and keep the team really strong. So, Stuart has to go and see some top teams now. Why would Stuart go and watch a Champions League game when we’re not at that level? Well, just in case we were to sell somebody for mega-bucks, that might be the market we’re looking at.

"Can we find a player who’s young and we can develop? Okay, we might have to pay a certain price for him, but we might have got that amount times four for the player we’ve just sold. They have to look at all the markets, and that’s what we’re doing."

Mowbray is increasingly optimistic that the club's summer additions will begin to push for a place in his starting XI after the upcoming international break, with both Nazariy Rusyn and Adil Aouchiche impressing as impact substitutes in the team's recent good run of form.

Mowbray also confirmed at his pre-match press conference that Eliezer Mayenda is on track to make his debut later this month.