Sunderland retained their key players in the summer transfer window despite interest from big clubs

Florent Ghisolfi believes a proactive approach was key to allowing Sunderland to keep their best players in the summer transfer window.

Significant interest was expected after the club's superb first season back in the Premier League, in which they finished seventh and qualified for the Europa League. Instead it was a relatively calm summer, with an early move from Chelsea for Granit Xhaka rebuffed and the club retaining the core of their side from last season.

Ghisolfi has even been able to agree new contracts for some key players, including Robin Roefs and Enzo Le Fée. The club's director of football says he is proud that players aren't looking elsewhere and believes that is down months of hard work behind the scenes ahead of the window opening.

"I think we created also the condition before to keep them," Ghisolfi said.

"They feel our ambition, they feel that they are happy. It's not only the player, it's also his family, so I think today the club worked well to create an environment where the player wants to stay. And it's not easy, because today the players they often think it's better somewhere else. Here, it's not the case, so it's also something we are proud of."

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While the arrival of three players on deadline day meant that Sunderland ended the transfer window with six new additions, but it was nevertheless a far quieter summer than Ghisolfi's first at the club.

Ghisolfi said this was very much a deliberate policy, and that keeping the team together was the number one priority.

"It was the priority," Ghisolfi said.

"If you told me, "Okay, you can sell seven players and buy seven players, or you can keep the team but you don't sign players," I prefer to keep the team 100%. Because as we said, this team is young and has a good energy, they like to play together. So this was the big priority for us. So we didn't want to touch this team who took Sunderland to Europe. We wanted to make this team stronger, this was the idea and I think today we kept all the starters, and we secured also some of them [to new contracts]. It was important."

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