THERE is an aggressive “three-year plan” with the intention to make Sunderland a force in the Football League again, according to the club’s Uruguayan investor who dreams of returning Premier League football to Wearside.

Juan Sartori has described his reasons for agreeing to get involved at the Stadium of Light following Stewart Donald’s takeover in the summer, having agreed to buy a 20 per cent stake to get his involvement rolling.

Sartori has already attended a game and was well received by supporters and he feels things are going well in the early stages under the new regime.

“Sunderland is a huge club, the seventh largest in England, a club with a lot of history and a big following, and that’s what made it attractive,” said Sartori.

“I think 17 months ago it was a club in the Premier League, now it’s starting the League One season so definitely something went wrong there, something went very, very wrong.

“The biggest job we have to do now is to identify what are the problems and then a very strong turnaround to take the club back to where we believe it deserves to be, and most of the fans, which is back in the Premier League.

“We have a plan which is a two to three-year plan which is very aggressive and is actually working pretty well. From a business point of view it’s turning and showing the results of the job we are doing.”

Donald has successfully slashed the wage bill since taking over from Ellis Short but are still paying out around the £11m mark on players’ salaries, far in excess of any of the other teams in League One.

Asked if it will be straight forward to turn things around, Sartori said: “Easy one? Not at all, I think the task is big, to reverse that momentum that has been going on for the last two or three years was not easy.

“We have a concept that involves everybody, the fans the community, everybody is involved, in the city it’s important for most of the people. The first thing we did is communicate very openly about what we wanted to do, what needed to be done and the help we needed from supporters.

“I think that combination is working pretty well with a complete new team on the pitch, a lot of young players, academy players that we’re giving an opportunity to, a completely new corporate team with the board, with Stewart Donald, Charlie Methven and myself.

“On the playing side it’s never easy to win even if you have the biggest badges and the best organisation.”

Sartori, who has connections to Monaco, agreed to have a stake in Sunderland having explored the market in recent years.

“My heart in football is with Uruguay, that’s where I live in the World Cup,” Sartori had been quoted in an interview with cnbc.com.

“It’s a passion I wanted to combine with what I do which is investments and growing companies, so buying a football team and trying to develop a project has been an idea of mine for some time.

“I tried to acquire Oxford, it didn’t work out but as usual at times in life a much more exciting opportunity came with the Sunderland opportunity.”

Things had been going pretty smoothly for Sunderland until the recent blip, which has seen them follow up two home draws with an away defeat at Burton. They head into Saturday’s home game with Rochdale knowing defeat could see them drop out of the play-off places.

While Charlie Wyke’s knee injury has ruled him out for a couple of months, manager Jack Ross has been able to consider winger Aiden McGeady again – and the Irishman should be an asset in the third tier.

Sunderland forward Chris Maguire could be competing for a place with McGeady, but said: “It’s great to have him back and it’ll only help the squad and the hunger. He’s still a bit away fitness-wise but it’s good to get him back on the pitch and hopefully he can kick on now.

“It’s good for the full team because there’s other boys coming back also. Nobody’s got the right to keep their place unless they’re performing week in, week out.”