Friday 9 September 2016 15:51, UK
David Moyes has told Sunderland supporters it will take "three or four transfer windows" to sort out his squad.
Moyes broke the club's transfer record to make Didier Ndong the most expensive of eight summer signings, and Sunderland have added two more players on free transfers since the deadline.
But weeks after warning fans to expect another relegation scrap in the Premier League, Moyes has made it clear there can be no quick fix.
"People don't always want to hear it," said the Scot ahead of the Monday Night Football game against his old club Everton, "but the fact of the matter is I think the slow builds are better than the fast ones.
"The job is to make a bit of progress every year and try to give this club back a real bit of identity. It's a great club as far as supporters go, as far as the infrastructure they've got, but we need to get a club that is getting round about the middle of the table and then we'll start to attract another level of player, then eventually we'll start to attract another level of player.
"It was the same at Everton - we started at the bottom, we worked up, and if you're using Everton as a template you can see the difference in the level of players they're now attracting.
"We're happy because we were able to bring in new players and we needed to. We're only in our first transfer window - it's going to take three or four transfer windows here at Sunderland to get us a side which I feel hopefully will represent the club the way it should be represented."
Moyes believes the progress made during his 11 years at Everton should offer comfort to Sunderland followers looking for life beyond an annual battle to beat the drop.
He said: "Everton, like Sunderland, were close to the bottom of the league when we took over, and it's a journey to pick that up. it can't be done in a quick hit - it just can't be done, unless you're going to throw bundles of cash at it.
"We didn't do that at Everton, and you can look at them now, and I'm sure that's not what we're going to do at Sunderland either."
