Steve Bruce left with a whimper, but Martin O’Neill returned, typically, with a bang.

And what a joy it was to see the wiry Irishman dancing up and down the touchline as he watched Sebastian Larsson curl a magnificent last minute winner up and over the Blackburn Rovers wall. O’Neill’s dream job in football got off, perhaps fortunately, to a dream start, but at Sunderland Athletic Football Club, dreams have a habit of remaining just that.

Steve Bruce failed to cope with the pressure of expectation after spending big this summer. He bought in a lot of quality and Premier League experience over the summer and when that happens the expectations from the fans and the board rise exponentially. The loss of Gyan was a massive blindside for Bruce and no doubt had a big impact on his plans for the club, but that wasn’t seen as good enough an excuse for Sunderland’s miserly start to the season. There is no time for gelling and natural cohesion when you invest tens of millions of pounds on a football team. Steve Bruce failed to spread that investment into the forward line and when Gyan demanded a move, he was left in a bad place.

The problem for Martin O’Neil is, he’s inherited that problem, and with so much spending in the month of January, how much money will Niall Quinn be willing to give his new man to spend to amend that problem?

To be fair to Sunderland, it is hard to think of a more capable manager available than O’Neill. The Northern Irishman worked absolute wonders in his time at both Celtic and Aston Villa, and even before that with Leicester City whom he lead to two League Cup wins and lead to four consecutive top ten finishes. This is a guy with some serious experience behind him, and motivated by the fact that Sunderland was one of his two boyhood clubs, O’Neill and Sunderland look set to be a match made in heaven.

The Sunderland job is not the easiest in the Premier League. Ambitious owners and even more ambitious fans mean that mediocrity is not acceptable for the red and white of Wearside, even though it is the most likely outcome. That they have to endure Newcastle’s dizzying jaunt at the top four makes failure even harder to accept, and O’Neill will have to prove very quickly that he is capable of turning Sunderland from a midtable fixture, into regular participants in continental football, which is undoubtedly the long term goal.

He got so close to doing just that at Aston Villa, before being crudely removed after Randy Lerner decided that close was not good enough after the millions invested in the squad, despite consistently finishing top six under his guidance. At Sunderland he faces a somewhat similar challenge, in taking an inconsistent club and striving for European football.

Europe would seem an unlikely possibility this season, unless there are dramatic improvements up front, but he has at least inherited a team that looks generally in good shape and well covered across the rest of the pitch. With a host of promising young talents coming through, O’Neill has at least inherited a squad with a decent long term outlook.

The challenge for O’Neill will be transforming decency into real quality.