Steve Bruce ensured shrewd £7m Sunderland transfer profit - He became a Liverpool mainstay | OneFootball

When Sunderland paid £2m for Simon Mignolet in 2010, they weren't just getting an excellent goalkeeper; they got an excellent investment too.

When Sunderland spent £2 million to bring an unknown goalkeeper to the Stadium of Light from Belgium, they were also getting a player who would make them a very tidy profit.

In the summer of 2010, Sunderland needed a new goalkeeper, and they chose to think outside the box in terms of bringing someone in. What they might not have realised at the time was just how successful this new signing would be.

Simon Mignolet had signed for his hometown club Sint-Truidin as a 16-year-old in 2006, and within a couple of years he was their first choice goalkeeper. In the 2009-10 season, he started to come to a lot of clubs' attentions with a string of outstanding performances which helped his team to promotion.

Simon Mignolet grew during his three years at Sunderland

Sunderland, then managed by Steve Bruce, saw their opportunity and struck that summer, paying £2 million to take him to the Stadium of Light.

There was an element of a gamble about it all. Mignolet was untested in any top-flight division, even in Belgium, and since goalkeepers tend to mature a little later than outfield players, bringing in a young goalkeeper as a first choice could be seen as risky.

But the benefits were almost immediate. By March 2011, Mignolet's performances had impressed Belgium enough to give him his full international debut against Austria. He went on to make 35 appearances for his country over the next 11 years.

Meanwhile, in the Premier League, Mignolet was demonstrating his value on a week-by-week basis with Sunderland, but behind the scenes at the club cracks in the ownership of Ellis Short were starting to show. Bruce left in November 2011. His replacement, Martin O'Neill, lasted until March 2013 before being replaced by Paolo Di Canio, who only lasted six months and 13 games.

Mignolet became a Liverpool regular after Sunderland exit

And in the summer of 2013, Liverpool pounced. They offered £9 million to take the goalkeeper to Anfield, and at four and a half times what Sunderland had paid for him just three years earlier, it was an offer too good to turn down. The move suited Mignolet, too. It was time for the next step in his career, and moving to Liverpool was the sort of move of which every young player dreams.

He ended up at Anfield for six seasons and became a regular, running up 155 Premier League appearances for them, but the writing was on the wall for his time with Liverpool when they signed Alisson Becker in 2018.

Mignolet had already been unused on the substitutes' bench at the end of the 2017-18 season, when he was an unused substitute when Lorus Karius had the mother of all bad days at the office and Real Madrid won the Champions League final 3-1. He was back there again the following year, when Liverpool beat Spurs 2-0 to lift the trophy.

At the start of the 2019-20 season he left, returning to Belgium with Club Brugge, and at 37 years old he's still with them to this day, playing 35 times for them in the Belgian Pro League during the 2024/25 season.

Professional football is a business, and part of that business is the buying and selling of players. For a club the size of Sunderland, Mignolet was arguably the perfect signing. They paid a relatively modest fee for him, got three years' excellent service out of him, and were then able to sell him on at a price which suited them and for a move that would benefit the player. It was the perfect signing, for both club and player.