The £20m winger who could revolutionise Sunderland’s playing style and boost PL survival push - opinion

According to reports on Wednesday, Sunderland have made another significant and expensive addition to their squad as they prepare for life back in the Premier League – Brighton winger Simon Adingra, who flashed immense talent in the 2023/24 season, is on his way to the Stadium of Light.

According to Sky Sports reporter Keith Downie, the Ivorian has agreed personal terms ahead of a £20.5m transfer which could make him the second most expensive player in Sunderland history after Habib Diarra, who arrived in June, if all of the add-ons are met. But what happened to Adingra last season after such a promising start to his Brighton career, and how will he change the way that Sunderland play?

Simon Adingra is a difference maker who needs to recapture his best form

It didn’t take Adingra long to settle in the south coast after moving from Belgian side Union Saint-Gilloise in the summer of 2023. The Ivorian swiftly established himself as a regular starter at the Amex Stadium, scoring six Premier League goals and showing flashes of flair and excellence as he switched from one wing to the other.

It was a different story in 2024/25, however. Adingra only started 12 league games over the course of the season, scored just twice, and left the impression of a player that struggled to impress new head coach Fabian Hürzeler. Now, just a year after the 23-year-old seemed to be set for a bright future with Brighton, he is on the way out.

The lack of starts and goals, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that Adingra’s performances fell off after an occasionally scintillating start to life with the Seagulls – rather, it was a combination of the arrival of Yankuba Minteh, the lack of any need to rotate Kaoru Mitoma and a hamstring injury which really kept his minutes down, rather than any drastic fall-off in Adingra’s own output.

In fairness, his finishing did seem a little less certain last season, perhaps due to spending so much time on the bench, and he went from hitting the targets with over 40% of his shots on goal to under 25% - but on a minute-by-minute basis, he was also creating more chances for his team-mates, getting into more shooting positions and beating more defenders with the ball at his feet than he had previously.

In short, Adingra was simply a victim of the fact that he firmly behind Mitoma in the pecking order on the left and, as a right-footed winger, didn’t seem to fit the coach’s style on the right, where Minteh and Brajan Gruda were preferred. Brighton simply had so many attacking players available that someone had to miss out. That was Adingra.

It may well also be the case that Hürzeler was unimpressed by his relatively modest defensive contributions. Adingra is effective in the high press but not noted for being especially ready and willing to track back and help out the defence, something the German manager appears to have prized based on the way he pushed Minteh to help out in deeper areas more often. If Sunderland are less concerned by that, then they may have just made a very fine signing.

How Adingra will change Sunderland next season

Adingra himself supposedly prefers to play on the left side of attack – but given that Sunderland have just spent around £20m to make the loan signing of Enzo Le Fée permanent, he may well find himself seeing more minutes on the right wing, where he could replace Patrick Roberts going forward.

Despite Adingra’s own preferences, plenty of Brighton fans would suggest that he actually offers more threat down the right anyway. Five of his six Premier League goals in 2024/25 came down that side, for starters.

He also offers, on paper, more of an upgrade on Roberts than on Le Fée, who like Adingra is more than capable of using his combination of technical quality and off-ball movement to get into dangerous areas and beat defenders one-on-one when given opportunities.

Roberts, by comparison, receives downfield passes around a third less often than Adingra per match, a testament to a gulf in their ability to find room in the final third, and while arguably a better passer of the ball and even a better technician, he lacks Adingra’s ability to beat men with a sudden burst of speed or his level of threat in and around the penalty area.

Roberts created more chances in the Championship than Adingra has in the Premier League and may have continued that trend in the top flight, but Adingra can help Sunderland to play a more direct and aggressive playing style, one which focusses less on ball retention than on getting in behind defences at pace.

Given the way that Régis Le Bris has set teams up throughout his managerial career, a style based on counter-attacking and quick transitions, Adingra makes more sense than Roberts and perhaps even more than Le Fée, although the Frenchman will surely be a major contributor.

It also, frankly, makes sense to emphasise the signing of players who can generate their own chances and feed off of direct attacks when the reality of promotion to the Premier League is that Sunderland will likely have precious little possession for many of their matches. To snatch wins and avoid relegation, they need players who can create goal-scoring chances from scraps. Adingra fits that bill.

Between Diarra and Adingra, Sunderland are signing players who are young and are likely to have substantial resale value should the worst happen, but the difference between what Sunderland are doing now and what Ipswich Town attempted last year is that Adingra and Diarra are proven, to a certain extent, in top-flight football, rather than prospects who shone at a lower level and looked like they were ready to make the step up. Some of Ipswich’s signings struggled to do that - there is little cause to worry that Sunderland’s will have the same problem.

The price tag seems reasonable enough for a player with plenty of miles left in the tank, too, and on the surface this seems like shrewd business from Sunderland – the signing of a player who will give them chances to grab points that might otherwise elude them, and one who could well develop further still and fulfil his potential as a first-rate attacking threat. Last season wasn’t ideal for Adingra, but the only story it really told us was that he isn’t quite as good as Mitoma. There’s a lot of room to be good enough for Sunderland within the bounds of that description.