The 48-year-old will return to the DW Stadium, renamed after chairman Dave Whelan, still smiling at his former employer's accusation earlier this week that he had left his successor Roberto Martinez with some "dodgy" signings.

Whelan's comments came after the Latics were trounced 9-1 at Tottenham last Sunday, and drew an amused response from Bruce, who suggested that if Whelan meant Charles N'Zogbia and Hugo Rodallega, he would happily take both men off his hands.

In the absence of that unlikely scenario, the Black Cats manager will instead allow his re-shaped Sunderland squad do the talking for him.

Of the 11 men who started last Saturday's 1-0 Premier League victory over Arsenal, three - Paulo da Silva, John Mensah and Lorik Cana - were signed by Bruce after his arrival at the Stadium of Light from Wigan during the summer, and two more, Michael Turner and Lee Cattermole, would have played had they not been suspended and injured respectively.

Cana and Cattermole in particular have been major hits on Wearside, while Paraguay international da Silva, unknown in England until he arrived at Sunderland is, like Cana, rapidly approaching cult status.

Bruce said: "In management, a big part of it is that you are judged on your signings. It's a vital part of management - the biggest part, if I am being honest.

"The one thing you want when you do sign a few players is that they can it the ground running.

"Thankfully, the vast majority we have brought into the squad have done that. They have all had a good start to their careers at Sunderland here, so we are delighted about that."

Bruce, who will jet off on a fresh, but secret scouting mission after the game at Wigan, is for perhaps the first time in his managerial career, operating with the kind of spending power which is the envy of many of his colleagues as owner Ellis Short and chairman Niall Quinn attempt to give him the tools to establish the club as a genuine Premier League force.

He said: "We are trying to build something here.

"It's a big club in its own right, this one, and we are trying to do things to take the club forward."

That was not, of course, the situation during the 18 months or so of Bruce's second spell at Wigan, although he insists Whelan was equally ambitious, if from a different starting point.

He said: "For what he has done at Wigan, it's quite an unbelievable, remarkable story when you think where they were 30 years ago. It's an unbelievable success story.

"But here, we have got an ambitious chairman, an ambitious owner and we want to try to take the club forward."

However, it remains a source of regret that he did not get the chance to push Wigan to the fringes of the race for Europe last season when the club accepted January offers for Emile Heskey and Wilson Palacios.

Bruce said: "For 12 months from January to the following January, we amassed something like 60-odd points, which would have taken us into Europe if it had been a calendar season.

"But in the January window, we lost Heskey and we lost Palacios, [Amr] Zaki decided to go AWOL and the [Antonio] Valencia deal (to Manchester United) was practically done as well, so it was a difficult time.

"But still, there you go. If we had kept them, I would have been convinced we certainly would have been in the top 10, that's for sure, and who knows, an outside chance of getting into Europe.

"Do I regret that we didn't do it? He was sensible enough to know and to have that policy, the chairman, which is quite refreshing. He knew the limitations, he knew what it was all about."