AS Sunderland prepare to come face-to-face with Jordan Henderson at Liverpool tomorrow – Steve Bruce has declared that the big-money sale of the Black Cats academy product could be a blessing in disguise.
Bruce was sad to see a player who rose through the Wearsiders’ ranks to the England squad depart the club in a £19.25m deal this summer – but he has relished the chance to revamp his squad as a result.
The Black Cats travel to Anfield to face Kenny Dalglish’s Reds in tomorrow’s Premier League opener with Bruce’s side likely to feature a number of new faces he has recruited since Henderson left. Bruce has been very busy in the transfer market in the close season with ten players putting pen to paper and moving sticks to the Stadium of Light.
Keiren Westwood, Wes Brown, John O’Shea, Sebastian Larsson, Craig Gardner, David Vaughan, Ahmed Elmohamady, Conor Wickham, Ji Dong-Won and James McClean have all arrived at the Stadium of Light.
And, according to Bruce, the fact that they are here is down to Jordan Henderson.
The 21-year-old stunned the red-and-white faithful when he told Bruce that he wanted to turn his back on his home-town club in favour of the new challenge being offered to him at Liverpool.
However, the huge fee pocketed by Sunderland from the sale of the 21-year-old allowed Bruce a stronger hand to go in to the transfer market and strengthen the areas of the team as he saw fit – which given the aforementioned list, shows that he has done so.
Bruce said: “First and foremost we wish the kid (Henderson) well. He’s had a meteoric rise from being a youth team player here to going to play for England to commanding the fee he has.
