Make Your Case: Should We Be Raiding The Relegated Sides?

Gav: Why Not?!

See, for me, I think judging a potential signing purely on whether or not they were part of a squad that was relegated isn't particularly fair. If being relegated is the yardstick, then Jermain Defoe - who was relegated with West Ham - would never have ended up here.

I guess the point I'm making is that it's not necessarily a defining point whether or not a player that has been relegated is quality or not.

When I look at the sides that have gone down - Aston Villa, Norwich and Newcastle - I think all three sides have players that would improve our squads somewhat. In particular, Norwich have Timm Klose and Nathan Redmond, two players I'd absolutely love to see at Sunderland. At Newcastle, Andros Townsend and Daryl Janmaat would be instant improvements on Fabio Borini and Billy Jones, whilst Aston Villa - a side who have been absolutely appalling in truth this year - have the likes of Jordan Ayew and Idrissa Gueye, players that have been the only shining lights at Villa Park this season.

Would you agree that all of those players would improve us?

Whilst I feel that we have to absolutely nail recruitment this summer, players like Redmond, Klose and Gueye would infinitely improve our squad and have genuine quality. If the price is right, I have no problem with us targeting signings from the relegated sides.

I don't think signing any of those players would make us worse, nor would it harm our chances of improvement. Being relegated doesn't make a player poor, and we could do much worse than picking the bones of the sides that have dropped into the Championship this season.

Rory: Why Bother?!

We've been down the route of signing relegated players before and it hasn't exactly been successful, has it? I'm not saying that relegation automatically makes someone a bad player but I don't think there's many standouts in the current lot. There certainly isn't anyone that would massively improve our side.

I've seen a few people mention Nathan Redmond of Norwich but he was even struggling to get into their side. Given that Duncan Watmore plays in a similar position and is the same age as Redmond, I'd much rather we kept our focus on Watmore and brought in another attacker with more experience. It won't really be a season where we can afford to bring in too many younger players either given that Jordan Pickford, Tommy Robson, Tom Beadling, George Honeyman and Rees Greenwood, along with Watmore, will be targeting the first team squad.

I doubt you'd see any Newcastle players wanting to cross the divide and Aston Villa are a team of has beens and mercenaries. In January we had a successful window because our scouting was thorough and well thought out, not lazy and simple. We have to continue down the path we started on at the start of the year and try and find more Jan Kirchhoff's, Lamine Kone's and Wahbi Khazri's. We don't need a bloody Rudy Gestede!

I'm not saying we need to throw daft money around and I'm not expecting us to sign the next Messi, but we've proved we can attract better players under Sam Allardyce. We need to keep aiming that little bit higher and not just try to pick off some low hanging fruit.

Who do you agree with? Vote below!