SAM ALLARDYCE admits it is imperative Sunderland banish their early-season blues as they look to avoid yet another relegation battle next season.

Having guided his side to their latest ‘Great Escape’ in the final weeks of last season, Allardyce is hoping to establish the Black Cats in the mid-table safety zone next term.

He will oversee a summer recruitment drive in an attempt to improve his side’s fortunes, and is determined to ensure his remodelled squad hit the ground running in the early weeks of next season.

Last year, he inherited a side that had picked up just three points from their opening ten matches, but Sunderland’s lacklustre start to the campaign was hardly out of character given their struggles in previous campaigns.

The Black Cats have failed to pick up a single league victory before October in each of the last two seasons, and you have go back to 2010 to find the last time the club won a league game in August.

Their dreadful early form has repeatedly put them on the back foot from the off, and Allardyce is desperate to avoid another repeat as he looks ahead to the early stages of next season, with the top-flight fixtures due to be announced on June 15.

“I wouldn’t want to go through what I went through when I first got here,” said the Sunderland boss. “You would strive very hard to make sure our first five games are our most important next year.

“The challenge to the team that starts next season - whatever we do recruitment wise, business wise, player wise – is that the team starts off by winning two or three of the first five, not losing them which they have done for the last four seasons.

“If you lose those games, you know then it always becomes the inevitable relegation struggle. If you do not win any of the first five, what a struggle it becomes after that.”

Allardyce is hoping to unveil some new faces before the start of the new campaign, with Swansea duo Andre Ayew and Bafetimbi Gomis figuring prominently in his thoughts.

The Sunderland boss is also scouring the European market, and is weighing up a potential offer for Lyon midfielder Rachid Ghezzal.

Ghezzal, a 24-year-old Algeria international, is about to enter the final year of his current deal with Lyon and has rejected the offer of a contract extension with the Ligue 1 side. As a result, he is set to leave Parc Olympique this summer, with Allardyce aware of his anticipated availability.

Meanwhile, Sunderland forward Fabio Borini has been left out of Italy’s provisional 30-man squad for this summer’s European Championships.

Borini has been part of Antonio Conte’s extended training group since the end of the Premier League season, but he was not included in the latest squad announced yesterday. Emanuele Giaccherini, who spent last season on loan from Sunderland at Bologna, was named in the squad, and is set to feature in the final 23-man group that has to be submitted to UEFA by May 31.