As regular visitors to Roker Report will know, I’m a huge fan of Eliezer Mayenda.
I love his exuberant goal celebrations, his tenacity, his ability to explode from a standing start to Mach 3 in the blink of an eye, and his resilience and ability to respond to setbacks that won him a legion of fans who might’ve been unconvinced by his credentials pre-2024/2025.
Last season, his improvement under Régis Le Bris was frankly astonishing. Amid the disappointment of failing to take excellent chances against
Blackburn Rovers and Stoke City, some of the goals he scored were superb and his equaliser at Wembley gave us the foothold from which we eventually went on to win the game.
That said — and in a refrain I’ve used regularly this summer — what was undoubtedly game-changing ability in the Championship won’t automatically carry over into the Premier League, and so Mayenda, like the majority of his teammates, is taking a step into the unknown — into a league everyone wants to be, but where the level is higher than many can comprehend.
It’s been a strange old pre-season for the young Spaniard, even if the recent news of a contract extension was welcome and thoroughly deserved.
His performances have been typically dogged and energetic, but the goals haven’t flowed as many might’ve expected and with Wilson Isidor recovering from injury and Chelsea loanee Marc Guiu (yes, I hear the arguments about ‘proven number nines’, but let’s run with this for now) yet to get going, perhaps there’s been a touch more interest in Mayenda’s exploits, but that’s another part of his development.
There’s no doubt that with time, backing and patience, Mayenda has the potential to become a genuine Premier League-level forward.
To use a well-worn phrase, he’s a ‘confidence player’ — extremely potent when his head is up and his radar is functioning well, but occasionally erratic in front of goal. To that end, he might go through a sharp adjustment period from the time we kick off against West Ham, but once it starts to click, I’m excited to see how he can impact games at the elite level.
To consider the wider point about the strength of the Sunderland forward line, it seems as though Régis Le Bris and his coaching team are seeking to spread the goalscoring workload, not being overly reliant on one player and expecting our wingers and attacking midfielders to chip in wherever possible.
I do think Isidor can make the step up and pose a genuine threat at this level, as can Mayenda, and I also don’t mind the loan addition of Guiu, even if the inclusion of a ‘guaranteed game time’ clause isn’t ideal, because the market isn’t currently flush with quality centre forwards. Maybe we’ll bring in another striker by the end of the window, thereby freeing up Ahmed Abdullahi to head out on loan, but the brief will be the same.
The service from midfield and the wings will need to be exceptionally accurate and reliable, but given the options available to us, when the real action begins, I see no reason why we can’t get the ball into dangerous areas with regularity and take advantage of the opportunities when they arise.
As pre-season has unfolded, there have been signs that the players who make up this revamped side are starting to build connections and build on last season’s style of play, and just as we kept something in reserve ahead of the playoffs, perhaps the same methodology is at play now.
Eighteen years ago, Sunderland embarked on our maiden Premier League campaign under Roy Keane with the likes of Stern John and Michael Chopra as our initial striking options, and it wasn’t until Kenwyne Jones joined the ranks that we could call on a striker who could really give top flight defences something to think about, as John Terry once famously declared.
At the time of writing, it’s safe to say that we’re in better shape in an attacking sense than we were back then, and despite the expectations on Mayenda’s young shoulders, I believe he’s got what it takes to continue his journey from one-time Hibernian loanee to first-choice Premier League striker — and it’s a tribute to his motivation and desire to improve that he finds himself in such a position.
