Dear Roker Report,
First of all, let me say a big thank you for the dedication you all show in running the site and podcast. I really enjoy listening and respect the time you all take to share your views and keep fans up to date.
I don’t usually bother writing in myself, but listening to the pod over the last couple of days and seeing fan reaction on social media to the latest defeat, I felt I needed to write in just to bring a bit of balance and a different point of view.
I wouldn’t class myself as a ‘happy clapper’,
but I firmly believe Régis deserves a lot more time to get things right this season. I know it’s just my own view, but I’m struggling to understand how we’re already at the point where, on the pod earlier, we were saying Régis’s position is ‘untenable’ and he is ‘already past the point of no return’.
There’s no hiding the fact that our current league form is not good enough. But let’s not overreact. We’ve played nine games so far. Of those, in my opinion, we’ve had good/acceptable performances in five (Arsenal, Man City, Brentford, Leeds and Fulham). The Brighton performance wasn’t good enough, but, as Man City found last weekend, many teams will lose to them this season, so the result itself wasn’t shocking.
So that’s three games (four if we include Brighton) which are unacceptable for me: Ipswich, Bournemouth and Coventry. In each of those games, our defenders (primarily Alderete, who is having an abysmal season, and, as much as I love him, O’Nien) have really let us (and Régis) down with inexplicable errors for professional footballers.
Are we really saying that after three or four bad performances Régis’s position is ‘untenable’ and it is ‘past the point of no return’? Have we lost all perspective as a fanbase? Have we forgotten where we came from? Only five months ago, we concluded an unbelievable season where Régis had led a newly promoted team (unfancied, and via the play-offs) to seventh in the Premier League… and into the Europa League. That achievement in today’s game is simply incredible and has been underappreciated inside and outside of SAFC. He should have been EPL Manager of the Year without question.
I heard a comparison on the pod about his second top-flight season in France… but the French league is not comparable in any way to the Premier League, where every team has huge investment and every team is competitive.
Don’t get me wrong… Régis can be stubborn. His RB at RW experiment has run its course (it was often successful last season but isn’t working now). And he has his favourites (Talbi, Ta Bi, Ohoka and others perhaps deserve more Premier League game time now). But I was so pleased today to see the club come out and publicly back the manager to clear up any thoughts that his job is even remotely on the line.
For me, I just can’t understand how we can be so quick to turn on a guy who has dragged our club back up to the top flight, masterminded an incredible (and, in recent times, unprecedented) first season back, taken us into Europe again for the first time in 53 years, and restored our reputation and pride within English football. We are nine games in, five of which were against the current top seven teams.
He deserves better than this… and at least more balance to the discussion. We are also, of course, looking comfortable for progression in the Europa League with seven points from nine, and have made it to a League Cup quarter-final for the first time in years. Yes, the league form must be the priority, but let’s try to enjoy these other achievements.
There are other points I think we’re being blinkered on as a fanbase too. Granit Xhaka being the main one for me. There’s no doubt Xhaka’s performances have dipped overall (he set the bar at a stupidly high level last season, to be fair). But to say he’s not bothering to run and not covering the ground is just incorrect. The latest Opta stats show he is fifth in the entire league for distance covered by midfielders this season. I’d question whether Sadiki is more of an issue, given he appears nowhere on that list… yet receives little to no scrutiny.
Xhaka is also currently ninth in the league for most successful through balls this season (#1 SAFC player), 14th out of all players in the league for successful passes (#1 SAFC player) and fifth in the entire league for chances created (easily #1 SAFC player, though Enzo Le Fée is a respectable 18th). He is also fourth in the league for possession won (#1 SAFC player).
I’m not saying all of this because I’m Granit Xhaka’s number one fan, and I know what happened in the summer hurt many SAFC fans… but let’s not turn on or hound out of the team someone who is easily our most productive midfielder at this moment. Let’s not pretend he is not covering ground, creating chances and playing successful passes. Sadiki and Le Fée both need to raise their games massively.
Anyway… all of this is just for a bit of balance, really. I’m not a happy clapper, but I do still have faith in Régis and I do still think we’ll turn the corner. My biggest worry, though, is that as a fanbase we’re always looking for that next disaster and it feels like we’re on the brink of self-destruction.
And as we all know… when things are going well, Sunderland and the SOL are one of the best places to play. When things are going badly and the fans have turned, it’s one of the worst. Please, let’s not let that happen. Let’s keep backing the Lads, keeping some perspective and helping the team to turn a corner, which I’m sure they will.
Just my thoughts anyway, Lads! Keep up the great work and thanks for reading my ramble!
Cheers,
Chris
Editor’s note [Martin]: Thanks for the email Chris. Great thing about football is that we all have our opinions, and that’s all they are. I think regardless of where the change happens, something needs to change because we’re on course for a 20 point season if things keep going the way they are – so that could be the head coach, the formation, the tactics or the players. As we got to on the pod yesterday, I don’t think anyone would be 100% sure a change of manager would result in the right outcome, so what other options for change are there? The biggest concern for me at present is how we are out of possession, as much as what we do with the ball when we have it – the players aren’t making the right decisions on a regular basis, and are making mistakes on a regular basis. The effort doesn’t seem there, and the body language doesn’t seem right. So where does the blame lie? This season has been poor so far in the league, and the signs are ominous. As Chris said in his editorial yesterday – when has a Sunderland manager ever come back from a situation like this? You’ve got to go back the best part of 70 years I’d say. Hopefully, Le Bris can be the one who bucks the trend, because one thing I’m sure we’d all agree upon is we all want to see him turn it around! Whether we think he can or not is another matter.
Dear Roker Report,
People need to give their heads a shake.
Le Bris is the best manager we have had in years. We must stick with him. Who are we going to get, eh? Thomas Frank or some other failure?
Le Bris needs our support.
We have Europe to contend with, as well as the League Cup. We have young players still trying to find their feet in the most demanding league in the world. We have had a number of players away on World Cup duty who haven’t had a break, and we have had a pre-season disrupted, which massively affects players and form.
And we have a fixture computer that has given us a stinker of a start. And we have Le Bris trying to manage all this.
Make no mistake, Le Bris is the best manager we have ever had… FACT!
I have been watching us for 50-odd years, and he is the best.
People have short memories, and they should also look at the rest of the season, where we have the likes of Hull, Coventry, Ipswich, Palace, Forest, Brentford, Everton and the Scum all at home.
We also have to play some of these away still, so there are plenty of points to play for.
Yes, we are having a tough time, and that’s where we need to give our support instead of asking for Le Bris to go.
Get to the stadium and support the team with a wall of noise that flattens the opposition and instils confidence in our players.
It’s on us as fans to get behind them.
Paul Eden
Editor’s note [Martin]: The thing that concerns me is the performances – individual players simply don’t look ‘at it’. Le Bris isn’t making changes when he could, and isn’t giving opportunities to players who’ve earned them in the cup games. I think if people could see Le Bris trying to change things he’d be getting more leeway, but over the past month he’s repeated the same formation, line ups and tactics and expected to get different results. We need to see something different from him to get us out of this rut – and that’s where frustration stems from. Hopefully, he takes the opportunity to try something different over the next few games because, despite the statement from the club yesterday, they’ll need to see something change over the coming weeks – because, while you list ‘winnable’ games we have coming up, I’d not put money on us winning any of those playing the way we’ve played in the past four league games.
Dear Roker Report,
As I stood in the hot sun watching my children celebrate after we’d beaten Chelsea to secure European football back in May, there was a feeling of euphoria that I’ve rarely experienced as a Sunderland fan. When Granit Xhaka addressed the crowd, stating that this was “only the beginning and we want more”, the voice inside my brain from following Sunderland for nearly 40 years said, “This is Sunderland AFC, that will come back to bite us.”
It’s horrible to have the feeling that, as Sunderland fans, we aren’t allowed to have nice things, and as soon as we appear to have the good times back, you are just waiting for everything to spectacularly fall apart.
That hasn’t quite happened (yet). We’ve had some tough fixtures, no doubt, and I expected us to have a slow start after the World Cup, but the performances in the league have been alarming, to say the least. Zero attacking threat and a shambles in defence is a recipe for disaster that reminds me of performances under Moyes.
Going into the season, I had a niggling feeling that the club had had one chance to use a transfer window offering players European football to their advantage and blew it. A centre-half should have been a priority, which was compounded by our performance at Ipswich. A week before the season started, we’d only signed a 35-year-old on a free transfer and went into deadline day still needing a right winger, defender and striker.
If the club had genuinely kicked on this season, Hume, Rigg and O’Nien would be squad players. We knew we needed quality squad depth, but nine games into the season, those three are starting games (often with Rigg and Hume out of position), and none of our new signings can get a look in, not to mention we’ve already had to call on a kid out of the reserves to lead the line too.
The club quite rightly took the plaudits for recruitment last season, but they need to come in for some heavy criticism this time around.
We saw last season with Forest that players who’d looked excellent the season before saw their form dip, and unfortunately, our lack of squad depth isn’t equipped to carry that sort of baggage. In the early Premier League bottom three, there’s always a team that pulls away from trouble and one that gets cut adrift.
If we are to be the former rather than the latter, things need to change, and quickly. Currently, 40 points is looking a long, long way off.
Gaz, Co. Durham
Editor’s note [Martin]: I agree Gaz – I think the club believed its own hype and didn’t plan for this season with the level of detail we did for last season. As mentioned above, something needs to change because if we keep performing the way we are we’re down. The club have backed Le Bris to oversee that change, whatever that may be, so we’ll have to see.
Dear Roker Report,
Am I showing petulance here? After that performance on Saturday, play the second string against Dinamo Zagreb and see if that bothers the first-teamers into getting their act together.
A Lynn
Editor’s note [Martin]: We haven’t got that many options, given the Europa League squad restrictions. I’d actually be more tempted to make 6-7 changes for the Chelsea game. One will be enforced, with Alderete out, but I think Methalie, Ahoka, Ta Bi, Talbi, Meunier and Fofana should all come in on Sunday. Diarra would be added to that list too if he wasn’t injured. Again. If we went in on Sunday with: GK: Roefs. Defence: Meunier, Mukiele, O’Nien, Methalie. Midfield: Ahoka, Xhaka, Talbi. Attack: Ta Bi, Brobbey, Fofana, I think people would be enthused by it and get right behind them. My fear is we’ll go pretty much unchanged from Coventry to Chelsea.
Dear Roker Report,
Yes, things are not good in so many areas, and there is so much to sort out it is difficult to know where to start the ‘salvage the season’ programme. But when I think the powers at the top might pursue a replacement manager in the hope they can immediately fix things, I have to consider their previous favourites (pre-Régis), and five words come to mind:
Michael Beale and Will Still.
Mel O
Editor’s note [Martin]: You’re a few days too later for halloween, Mel! In all seriousness, we’re a Premier League club now, not a Championship club, so you’d expect us to be able to select from a better pool of candidates, but honestly – given some of the changes KLD has overseen and some of the personnel he’s got rid of (and appointed) over the last year or so, I wouldn’t have huge faith in him getting any appointment correct. It’s one thing talking about getting rid of a manager – replacing him well is far more difficult.
