Sam Allardyce insists Sunderland must spend big to avoid another relegation battle

The Sunderland manager Sam Allardyce will meet with the club’s billionaire owner Ellis Short next week to seek assurances about the level of support he will be given in the transfer market to build on another dramatic survival.

Allardyce led Sunderland to their fourth great escape in four seasons, confirming safety in a 3-0 win over Everton at the Stadium of Light on Wednesday.

However, the 61-year-old, who signed three key players in January in Lamine Kone, Jan Kirchhoff and Whabi Khasri, will ask for the backing to ensure there is not another fight to stay in the division, and he has warned Short players' prices will never have been higher. “We want to move away from the fact we’re all so happy at being heroes for surviving,” said Allardyce on Thursday. “We have to think much bigger and have much more ambition. We’ve avoided relegation four times on the trot now and have to make sure it doesn’t get to that level again.

“As a manager, you never get what you want, not really because you always ask for the ultimate. You go in with all guns blazing saying what it would look like if it looked like this. In between there, you come to an agreement.

“The most important thing is me recruiting the players which will help the club get better. One of the problems is it is going to be so much more competitive because the agents are already ringing up booking their next Rolls Royce because they are going to make so much money, charging so much for the players you want to buy. You will have to pay them so much to get the players because if we don’t do it, someone else will.

“What we have to do is get the best value for money we can."

The four players Allardyce signed in January proved key to the club's survival, as did the players he managed to offload, returning the club to being run by a manager, rather than a head coach and a director of football.

"The great pleasure for me is we recruited very well in January," he added. “That gives Ellis some confidence in going forward, that we recruit in the same way we did in January.

“The big thing then is the new players we bring in and how much they can improve the team. The next level of recruitment will be critical to us struggling or not. The owner has been searching for something different for so many years and has not found it. That’s why there has been so many changes and those changes haven’t solved the problem. Hopefully I can.”

It is thought Short has pumped £160 million into Sunderland since taking full control from the Drumaville Group and Allardyce added: “He wants to be successful, he wants to see the club grow and be in a position of strength, to move up the league and, ultimately, to try and to win a cup final and eventually build to qualify for Europe.

“That takes good planning, good management and good recruitment, which is the hardest job of all and has never been more difficult. Every player you have a value on, very rarely will you get him for that price. It’s normally much more, and that is the ultimate problem, we have to spend millions and millions of pounds to get better.

“You have to move in Europe and a lot of the value is in France, it has been for the last 10 years. You can negotiate with the French clubs for a reasonable price and the players who come from France seem to adapt well to the Premier League.”