The Black Cats boss is due to sit down for talks this week both with the returning players and with players who are out of contract this summer, to discuss their futures.

Sunderland had five players on loan to the Championship.
Andy Cole and Stanislav Varga were at Burnley, Russell Anderson at Plymouth Argyle, Greg Halford at Charlton Athletic and Graham Kavanagh at Sheffield Wednesday.

Young prospects Peter Hartley and David Dowson have returned from their loan spell at League Two side Chesterfield, while Spanish midfielder Arnau Riera is yet to complete his loan spell at Scottish Premier side Falkirk.

In addition, Sunderland have several players out of contract this summer that Keane will want to talk to, especially now the Reserve league is over and only one first team game remains to be fulfilled - the match against Arsenal this Sunday.

Sunderland play in the Durham Challenge Cup final tonight but only players who have featured in the earlier rounds of the competition are eligible and only youth players, Carlos Edwards and Andy Cole have featured previously.

Neither of the senior players will feature this evening so the decks are clear for Keane to get on with his restructuring of the Sunderland squad.

The manager was raging over the dreadful defeat at Bolton at the weekend and promised that he would be looking at the futures of just about everyone in his squad in its wake.

He said: "We need to move certain people on and a lot of that will be done this week and next week.

"It is irrelevant to me whether or not players are under contract.

"We have a few players whose contracts are up and that's easy enough but I really haven't got a problem with players moving on if they've got a big contract.

"If players think they're safe because of that, they've got another think coming.

"We'll give them a few bob to move on, it won't be a problem. It's simple.

"You pay players to come and you can pay them to go, it doesn't matter to me if they're under contract."

Sunderland players out of contract this summer are Stan Varga, Stephen Wright, Ian Harte, Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke.