Jack Ross: 'We need an answer on Eisa, Wyke and Evans in the next couple of days'

The Black Cats have lodged bids for all three players, but are still waiting to learn whether their current employers are willing to sell.

Eisa, who is the subject of a £1m offer, scored for Cheltenham Town today as they took on Reading’s Under-23s, while Wyke hobbled off after just eight minutes of Bradford City’s defeat to Sheffield United with what appeared to be a knee injury.

Evans has been at Reading’s pre-season training camp in Austria, with the Royals seemingly reluctant to allow him to leave until they have secured a replacement, and Ross, who watched his Sunderland side claim a pre-season win at Grimsby Town this evening, admits he cannot afford to wait too much longer for further transfer progress.

With Wahbi Khazri having finally completed his move to St Etienne today – the winger left Wearside for an initial £6m fee that could rise to £9m – funds are available for Ross to switch to alternative options if his current targets are deemed unavailable.

“I would prefer it if we knew one way or another in that period (the next couple of days),” said Ross, who watched Lynden Gooch’s first-half header secure a 1-0 win at Blundell Park. “We’re already up to 18 or 19 days before the start of the season and hopefully this time next year I’ll have had a full pre-season without any of this.

“It was always going to be the case that we were chasing our tails a little bit, but we don’t want to keep having to do that. I think there’s a recognition that if the players that we’ve identified can’t come, then it’s important that we know that quite quickly so we can move on and get as much in place as we can a week or ten days before the Charlton game. Obviously that’s the most important thing for us, and we’re going to have to squeeze a lot in during that time.

“The concentration for me has been on improving the players that are here, and I think you saw that tonight, but equally there’s been a lot of work on identifying players that could come in and help us.

“That’s underway, in fact that’s beyond underway, it’s been done. It’s now just a case of, ‘Can we get them here?’ Hopefully that will happen.”

Sunderland have not received a formal response from Bradford despite having lodged an offer of around £600,000 for Wyke on Monday night.

The striker suffered what appeared to be a knee injury in the early stages of tonight’s game at Valley Parade, although that would not necessarily rule out a move to the North-East.

“As I said on Saturday, he’s a player I like, but he’s also a player that’s under contract so it’s not straight-forward,” said Ross. “We’ll see.”

Eisa is also the subject of interest from Portsmouth and Peterborough, although Sunderland’s offer is the biggest that has been lodged with Cheltenham officials.

Ross is a big fan of the Sudanese striker, who was a prolific scorer with non-league Greenwich Borough prior to joining Cheltenham, but Eisa’s current employers are understood to be holding out for a fee of £1.5m.

“When we were doing recruitment in Scotland, we were always aware of players in England,” said the Sunderland boss. “We look at playing history and what people have done in their careers, and he’s a player whose goalscoring record has been outstanding through different levels of the game. I don’t think there should be a snobbery attached to that – to score that many goals at those levels, you have to be good.

“But again, the same as with Charlie Wyke, he’s a player under contract so I would never speak too much about them, other than to say they are good players, which is probably stating the obvious.”

Having watched his new-look side fail to win either of their opening two pre-season friendlies against Darlington and Hartlepool, Ross was much more satisfied with tonight’s performance.

With Gooch and Callum McManaman playing on either side of Chris Maguire, Sunderland produced some slick attacking play, with McManaman proving especially effective as he repeatedly burst beyond his opposing full-back. On this evidence, the former Wigan winger could be quite an asset in League One.

There were only three of Sunderland’s summer signings in the starting line-up, with Tom Flanagan marshalling the defence from the heart of the back four and Dylan McGeouch looking comfortable in possession at the base of midfield.

Maguire led the line despite not being a natural centre-forward, and while there were times when his desire to drift outside the area left Sunderland short of numbers in the box, he was the architect of his side’s 31st-minute winner.

His floated cross was ideally weighted for Gooch, and the American stole ahead of his marker to direct home a diving header from the edge of the six-yard box.

“The players have been really responsive to what we’ve done in training, but it takes time to adjust to new methods and a new manager,” said Ross. “Overall, I think we’ve improved in every game we’ve played, and I thought tonight was another improvement. I’m pleased they got their rewards in terms of the result because they do matter.”

Grimsby (5-4-1): McKeown (Russell 61); Whitmore (Davis 61), Collins (Whitmore 76), Famewo, Clifton (Dixon 61), M Rose (Hall-Johnson 61); Welsh (Trialist 61), Woolford (Trialist 61), Fox (Hessenthaler 61), Hooper (Robles 61); Cook (A Rose 61).

Sunderland (4-3-3): Stryjek (Ruiter 66); Love, Taylor, Flanagan, Hume (Matthews 66); Honeyman, McGeouch (Kimpioka 74), Robson (Mumba 59); McManaman (Maja 72), Maguire (Hackett 85), Gooch.