There’s an imminent announcement coming about a multi-year partnership between Elvis Presley and Sunderland AFC, which may even coincide with another multi-year partnership — the one between Régis Le Bris and Sunderland AFC, as today marks the two-year anniversary of his appointment as head coach.
He’s the first head coach or manager to be in charge for two full seasons since our Geordie friend, Steve Bruce, completed both the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 seasons. That’s fifteen seasons and by my reckoning,
fourteen permanent managers/head coaches.
Martin O’Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat, Sam Allardyce, David Moyes, Simon Grayson, Chris Coleman, Jack Ross, Phil Parkinson, Lee Johnson, Alex Neil, Tony Mowbray, and last and very much least Michael Beale. A right mix, from young, supposed up-and-coming coaches to experienced old-school managers.
A right mix of playing styles, too, from Poyet’s possession-based approach in the Premier League which divided opinion but personally I found hard to watch at times, to Parky-ball in League One which every one of us found extremely hard to watch just about all of the time.
They were all different in their own way. Everyone in every walk of life is different, of course, but in football terms, Le Bris really is different to all of his predecessors, isn’t he?
For me, the thing that stands out about Le Bris is his character; his personality is the real defining characteristic that sets him apart from the others that went before him.
Remember, he took the Sunderland job without bringing an entourage of coaches and analysts and that is extremely rare these days — look at Ruben Amorim at Manchester United and Graham Potter at Chelsea for the starkest of contrasts. He has no long-time assistant; no trusted lieutenant that’s been with him at previous clubs — look at Eddie Howe and his yes-man Jason ‘Perma-Tan’ Tindall at the visitors for another stark contrast.
That was brave and showed great strength of character.
Not only did Le Bris come to Sunderland alone, he was also taking a job in a country where he had to communicate in a second language, and I remember hearing a French journalist at the time of his appointment saying they didn’t even know he spoke English.
That was equally brave.
His personality comes through in his press conferences and interviews, when he’s very measured, very thoughtful and quite matter-of-fact but sometimes unintentionally quite amusing. Looking back, this self-confidence — this steeliness — was evident at the first press conference when he, now famously, said “We won’t play like Guardiola or De Zerbi, because we are Sunderland and I’m Régis Le Bris”.
He was true to his word because two years later we know how a Le Bris team plays and this too reflects his character.
Some might say his style is pragmatic — how many games have we won by a single goal in the Championship and the Premier League? if anyone is interested, the answers are fifteen out of twenty one wins in the Championship and ten out of fourteen wins in the Premier League, which in a very detail-orientated Le Bris fashion, is 71.4% in both seasons. But that’s Le Bris, isn’t it? A win is a win. Job done. No need to show off.
At the end of games, it’s a very quick handshake with the opposing manager and off he goes, off to plan the next game plan in infinite detail. There are no wild celebrations for goals or the final whistle — most of the time, just a funny little clap.
Thankfully, there are no performative histrionics on the sidelines — like Paolo Di Canio or Mikel Arteta, for example.
He’s just Le Bris.
He gets on with it in his own unique way. He’s very matter-of-fact when to comes to decisions about squads, team selections and game plans, and you know there’s been an awful lot of thought put into his decisions. Impressively, he’s also been able to communicate all of that to players and keep the “connections”, as he likes to put it, intact,
So, he might come across as a bit odd at times but he’s done a fantastic job in the last two years, and long may it continue.
He really is Régis Le Bris, not Guardiola or De Zerbi, nor Parkinson or Poyet. So, maybe it’s not Elvis we need to look to for a cultural reference for Le Bris’ two years on Wearside but Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, because “I did it my way” seems a very apt way to sum it up.
