Why brutal Sunderland striker blow could be brilliant news for Arsenal

They swarmed like termites, or LinkedIn locusts with a penchant for podcasting. When Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven arrived in the boardroom at the Stadium of Light, they said a lot of the right things to a lot of the right people. Hell, they even got rid of some pink seats. For Sunderland supporters, perennially let down and eroded of any optimism, all it took was a smattering of agreeable sound bites and a passion for interior design to sell the dream of a bold new future.

And then the asset-stripping began. Soon it became apparent that Donald and Methven were essentially Burke and Hare in matching M&S chinos. Throughout the club, corners were cut and promises were slashed, and nowhere was this more painfully and bafflingly evident than in the repeated decisions to offload promising youth prospects for relative pittances. As the [EDM continued], Bali Mumba was sold to Norwich City. Local starlet Joe Hugill left for Manchester United. There were other examples besides.

Eventually, of course, Dumber and Dumber packed up their snake oil grift into a donkey-pulled caravan and headed for the hills, pockets presumably bulging with copper wiring from the walls of the club canteen. And since then, things have been - for the most part - much, much better. Under Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, Sunderland have redefined themselves as a bastion to the virutes of youthful exuberance. The Black Cats and their roving guerilla death squad of kindergarten wizards, helmed by sweet-toothed custodian Tony Mowbray, have subverted all expectations of the damage that a blisteringly inexperienced side can dole out. Think Fagan’s gang, but with less musical numbers about petty theft and more sweeping counter-attacks enacted by wire-limbed wingers with bumfluff beards.

On occasion, however, the preposterously prodigious project is tinged with a counterfactual yearning to know how the likes of Mumba and Hugill would have served it. Both, without question, would have been given their chances, and both, almost certainly, would have seized upon them, clamp-jawed and thriving. Not that we will ever know for definite, of course. Disco Stew and Bonnie Prince Charlie, with their combined business acumen like a blind Capuchin monkey running a lemonade stand, saw to that.

But again, lessons have seemingly been learnt, the stings of prior howlers salved. You need only look, for instance, at how Sunderland have clung, white-knuckled and shrieking, to schoolboy crackerjack Chris Rigg in recent times to understand that progress - slow and steady - has been made.

Things don’t always work out how you would like, though. And that brings us, in a tangential sort of way, to Mason Cotcher.

You would be forgiven for not recognising the name. Cotcher is, after all, a 17-year-old striker yet to make a senior appearance for his boyhood club. Still, even at that age, the clock is ticking. Sunderland’s first team picture sometimes brings to mind the marriage conventions of a Georgian romance novel; if you haven’t made your debut before your 21^st birthday you might as well be a spinster.

But just because you, personally, might not have heard of Cotcher doesn’t mean that others are as unenlightened. No offence. According to the Sunderland Echo, having rejected the notion of a professional contract on Wearside, the teenager has embarked on a trial with Arsenal, and recently played for the Gunners’ U18s in a 1-0 win over Middlesbrough. No concrete agreement for his departure is in place just yet, but an exit feels like an increasing inevitability - despite the desperation of the Black Cats’ most endearing charm offensives.

And there is a reason why, like Rigg before him, Sunderland are so eager to chain Cotcher to a radiator in the corner of the Stadium of Light dressing room. Good strikers are hard to come by and discovering a good homegrown striker is like finding a unicorn that lays golden eggs; Cotcher, without a shadow of a doubt, has the potential to be a very, very good striker. His record for the U18s is stellar, and his instinctive contributions - the movement, the ability to play through the centre or out on the flank - would suggest that his ceiling is dizzyingly high.

With that in mind, you fear that Arsenal’s gain could well be Sunderland’s loss. It won’t be felt immediately, but rather in time to come, somewhat like the smarting of a broken bone once the initial shock of adrenaline subsides. And again, if Cotcher makes good on his obvious promise then the Black Cats could be left mourning another grand ‘what if?’ - dissipated from their grasp like a wisp of smoke, like Mumba and Hugill before him.

The difference this time is that it’s not for a lack of trying to convince him to stay. The extent to which that is a consolation is a matter of opinion.