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Sunderland’s sporting director Kristjaan Speakman says the club are under no financial pressure to sell players this summer as Premier League interest mounts in a number of key players.

Speakman stopped short of ruling out any summer exits but said that fans could draw confidence from the club’s record over recent transfer windows. Striker Ross Stewart is the only significant player sale since the change in ownership a few years ago, and that was as he entered the last year of his contract.

Jobe Bellingham is attracting strong interest not just from Crystal Palace but from across top tiers in Europe, while Jack Clarke is also in demand.

“I think it’s really difficult to predict what will happen through the summer,” Speakman said.

“I think all I can say on player retention is that we’ve had a really strong record on that. Obviously, it was fantastic news with young Chris [Rigg] signing this week, I think that endorses and echoes everything we’ve been saying previously, and like I said, we’ll just take every piece of interest or every discussion that happens along the way for what it is at that point in time. It’s really, really difficult to predict, and I appreciate from a supporter’s perspective, you want some certainty. I think the danger with the transfer window is it’s always an uncertain period, but our intent and our objective has always been to retain our talent.

“On Jobe, I can’t comment on the press stuff because I don’t really read it. I don’t really have too much knowledge of what’s out there, but he’s one a number of talented players we’ve got, and the backhanded compliment of having a talented group is there’s going to be constant interest. But as I’ve said before, I’d much rather get loads of interest on our talented players than be struggling to

name talented players in our group. So, I don’t want to go into the individual ins and outs because those things always can chop and change. But as I said, I can reiterate our strategy and our intent is to retain our top talent.”