Ivan Juric did not spend long with us in the Premier League. Just 14 games at Southampton, collecting just four points before his dismissal amid statistics claiming he was the worst to manage in the competition.
On his way out, however, after a defeat at Tottenham that confirmed relegation but before his sacking the next day, he delivered a succinct summary on the key problems for the newly promoted.
'Recruitment is everything,' said Juric. 'You have to find the right players for this league. What I noticed the most is a completely different physicality between us and the other teams in the Premier League. The same thing happened to Ipswich and Leicester.'
Southampton had been last year's Championship play-off winners, lauded for their commitment to an attractive passing style with an exciting crop of young players emerging under a progressive coach in Russell Martin.
In the Premier League, they were blown away as soon as the big boys figured out the way they played and realised they were not going to change it. Sacking Martin and replacing him with Juric barely mattered. Confidence was long since crushed.
Sunderland, who beat Sheffield United in the 95th minute in Saturday's play-off final to end their seven-year exile from the top flight, are on their way back with more than a hint of Southampton about them.
Under Regis Le Bris, a likeable, understated and studious Breton, they too are easy on the eye. They like to zip the ball about. They move at pace, although they are certainly more adaptable than Martin's Saints.
They, too, have invested successfully in youth, with prized academy graduates such Chris Rigg, Dan Neil and Tommy Watson, the Wembley goal hero already signed for Brighton where he is likely to find Premier League football harder to come by than he would have done at Sunderland.
There is a cluster signed at young ages, like Jobe Bellingham, Eliazer Mayenda and Wilson Isidor, picking up budding talent and cast-offs from elite academies to develop and sell if the price is right, as with Jack Clarke, Ross Stewart and Watson.
Enzo Le Fee, signed on loan from Roma thanks to his connection to Le Bris at Lorient, has added touches of quality in the second half of the season and will make his transfer permanent for a club record fee of up to £20m.
It is a wonderful success story, with credit due to director of football Kristjaan Speakman and chairman Kyril Louis-Dreyfus as well as Le Bris and his players, but the size of the task ahead is enormous.
Few who have tried to crack the Premier League with developing players have made promotion stick.
Whichever way you twist there is risk. Ipswich, having risen quickly from the third tier, spent big last summer to sign some of the top players they had seen performing in the Championship.
They ended up with a lot of options of a similar quality but lost balance and a touch of the understanding they had, while gaining very little by way of Premier League class and experience. As they go back down, they are resigned to losing the one who really made the leap, Liam Delap.
Burnley invested heavily after promotion under the previous year, mostly on young players, many from abroad and they looked lightweight as they were swatted straight back down adhering to Vincent Kompany's purist philosophy, an episode which did more for Kompany's personal standing than the club's.
If the last two years have shown us anything it must be that the evangelical pursuit of a single pure tactical philosophy is sheer folly without the best players in the competition.
Not only for newbies like Kompany and Martin, also those working in the so-called Big Six, like Ruben Amorim and Ange Postecoglou.
Adaptability is as vital as the willingness to scrap for points and play ugly. The idea of a young team coming up and weaving a silky survival script is nice but unrealistic.
Scott Parker and Daniel Farke have been here before, they will know as much. A Premier League campaign is relentless and young talent can be stripped of confidence before Christmas.
Parker looks as if he has been building a team at Burnley with this in mind. Le Bris is the new boy and not one player who started against the Blades at Wembley ever appeared in the Premier League.
Signing players of proven quality is neither cheap nor easy but Sunderland's first challenge is to get their recruitment right, and they could do with adding experience, knowhow down the spine of the team, and some power to bridge the physicality gap identified by Juric. Only then can their emerging talents properly flourish.
FIVE THINGS I LEARNED THIS WEEK
1. There was a time when the only way from Manchester United was down. Not anymore. Scott McTominay, hero of Napoli's Scudetto. Antony among the goals at Real Betis.
Erik ten Hag eyed by Bayer Leverkusen and Ajax. Perhaps most surprisingly, John Murtough bound for the Champions League as director of global development with Atalanta, the club he agreed to pay £72million for Rasmus Hojlund when he was in charge of recruitment at Old Trafford.
2. Ange in, Ruben out? Ange out, Ruben in? The daftest thing is that a flukey goal and an astonishing goal line clearance would make anyone flip their reckoning from one to the other.
As Postecoglou said before winning last month's quarter final second leg in Frankfurt: 'You either think I'm capable of doing the job now or you don't.'
3. If Ollie Watkins is bidding farewell to Aston Villa, rivals should be lining up to sign him.
At 29, his age does not fit the profile top clubs but he is a rarity: a centre forward with a pedigree in Premier League goals and an outstanding attitude, willing to work hard at the unsung elements of his craft.
4. The long throw is back. Before Sunday's games there had been 20 goals scored from long throws in this season's Premier League, compared to eight in the whole of last season, nine the season before and three in 2020/21. Hand in hand perhaps with the rise of the specialist set-piece coach.
5. If Wembley can't host the National League play-off properly, they should step aside for a stadium that can. There is no shortage of venues these days with facilities and capacities to accommodate Oldham and Southend, two of the best-supported teams in the fifth tier.