Sunderland's pivotal summer ahead of their Championship return after four years in the wilderness

Never again. That must be the lesson that Sunderland take away from their stay in League One.

Now that the dust has settled on the weekend's unforgettable Wembley play-off final celebrations, it is time to draw a line in the sand and resolve that the club must never again find itself languishing in the third tier. One season in the 1980s was one too many; this four-season stint was beyond the pale.

The novelty, if there ever was such a thing, wore off a very long time ago. Sunderland's promotion to the Championship is the first tentative step towards regaining the Premier League status lost five years ago.

And while a return to the top flight is still some way away - back-to-back promotions are much tougher to achieve than the back-to-back relegations the Black Cats suffered in 2017 and 2018 - it is at least now within sight, if not yet within reach. Sunderland's promotion is rightly viewed as a significant moment, a tangible sign that the club has turned the corner, but perhaps the toughest tests still lie ahead.

The architects of Sunderland's precipitous decline are long gone, with Ellis Short having sold up in 2018 following the double relegation which laid the club low. The next step is to purge the club of the remnants of the Stewart Donald regime which followed Short, and which squandered the wave of goodwill that greeted it, rapidly alienating supporters as failed promotion attempts were accompanied by revelations over the way the purchase of the club was financed, and a series of PR catastrophies.

While Kyril Louis-Dreyfus is now chairman, biggest single shareholder, and in control, Donald and Charlie Methven retain stakes in the club. Fans now want them to cash in their chips, sell their shares to