Sunderland’s team spirit should be very strong this season

Photo by Fran Santiago/Getty Images

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After Premier League promotion was secured and before our summer recruitment began in earnest, I penned an article headlined ‘Wasters and wage-stealers will find no home at Sunderland’, arguing that it wasn’t just talented footballers we needed to bring to Wearside.

As we all know, our most recent top flight campaign was pockmarked by managerial ineptitude, baffling decisions from on high, and most infamously, a ‘rotten core’ of players who didn’t give a flying you-know-what about anything other than

their own prospects and bank balances.

Nowadays, things are different but there’s also an interesting discussion around the need to ensure the togetherness of last season is preserved as we reshape the squad ahead of 2025/2026, and on all levels, I’m feeling optimistic.

First of all, there might be some unease about the need to strike the right balance between having a core of players who are already familiar with the club and overseas additions for whom English football is a new challenge, but I don’t see this as a major problem.

Back in 2006, Arsene Wenger casually swatted aside Alan Pardew and then-PFA chief Gordon Taylor’s remarks about Arsenal’s Champions League run ‘not necessarily being a triumph for British football’ by citing Arsenal’s proud record of inclusivity.

I feel responsible for the traditions of the club. We represent a football club which is about values and not about passports.

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Wenger 1, Pardew and Taylor 0. And rightly so.

He was a composed and insightful Frenchman who won the trust of the fans through his actions and his footballing philosophy. Régis Le Bris is the same: a deep thinker about the game and clearly a very adept man manager, and it’s here where things start to get really interesting.

Much is made in modern football of the ‘soul’ of a club, but in practical terms, what does it encompass?

The backgrounds of its players? Hardly. The ethos embodied on the pitch? Most definitely. The rapport between the team and its supporters? Without a doubt. That’s what makes a club what it is and in our case, there’s a lot to be encouraged by.

The togetherness and camaraderie displayed by the Lads during the 2024/2025 playoff run was cast-iron. It carried us a long way and I have no doubts the recruitment team have attempted to ensure that the new additions bring the right qualities to the table and that any future additions will do the same.

If you want to represent Sunderland AFC in 2025, it’s increasingly clear that you have to bring a very specific set of attributes to the table.

Photo by Fran Santiago/Getty Images

In order to make an impact, the ability to whip in an accurate cross or bamboozle an opponent with a stepover isn’t enough. You need to be willing to work hard, place the team’s needs above your individual goals and accept that half measures won’t be tolerated.

For this summer’s new arrivals, it might’ve been an eye-opening experience thus far, but judging by the footage we’ve seen from the club’s Portuguese training camp, they’re getting in tune with their teammates and learning about what it means to wear the red and white shirt.

In a biopic of San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice, former teammate Steve Young noted that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, new arrivals learned very quickly that there were a specific set of standards you’d need to hit in order to be accepted at Candlestick Park and that Rice, with his relentless work ethic and remarkable single-mindedness, was the very embodiment of that.

Could a similar mindset be establishing itself within the Sunderland dressing room?

We’re not entirely bereft of leadership and whilst the additions of one or two experienced heads would be a bonus, it’s probably fallen to the likes of Trai Hume, Dan Neil, Patrick Roberts, Dan Ballard and Luke O’Nien to say to the new lads, “This is how we do things at Sunderland nowadays, and this is how you’re expected to perform”, and hopefully they’re responding to that.

For years, our club limped along without a soul, a sense of direction, an identity, and almost anything else of value.

Piece by painstaking piece, it’s been put back together and it’s up to the current group to carry it forward. It won’t be easy and their resilience will be tested frequently, but whatever next season may bring, we’ll be watching a set of players who aren’t here for an easy ride or a guaranteed payday — something that represents a sea change in itself.

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