As we’re currently in the midst of a very long and quite frankly pointless international break, now is a good time to reflect on the achievements of Régis Le Bris. After taking charge of his one hundredth game as Sunderland manager in the defeat to Manchester City, just how good has he been for Sunderland AFC?
In the last decade, Sunderland has quite often been a basket case of a football club with lots of turnover of players and almost as much managerial turnover, too.
So often, a new season would
start with optimism, new arrivals and a new manager at the helm backed by a full summer of transfers, only for us to start the slowly and end up in a relegation scrap as early as October or November.
A new manager would come in, inject a new lease of life into the playing squad and do just enough to keep us in the league. These were often appointments made with one objective: to keep us in the league.
Whilst the managers appointed to do these jobs achieved their objectives, they would be gone by the start of October of the following season and the merry-go-round would start over.
Even in the days of League One, a manager would come in to get us promoted and whilst unsuccessful in their first season, were given a second bite of the cherry the following season, but slow starts would lead to their dismissal and for someone else to take the reins.
This makes the achievement of Le Bris in reaching one hundred games all the more impressive.
The last Sunderland manager to reach this milestone would also achieve promotion in his first season in charge and would go on to have a successful first season in the Premier League. That man was Roy Keane all the way back in 2007/2008. Ironically, Keane left Sunderland with a very similar winning percentage as Le Bris’ current Sunderland winning percentage.
After one hundred games in charge, Keane had managed 42 wins — exactly the same as Le Bris’. This is the best winning percentage of any Sunderland manager to complete a full season since Jack Ross in 2018/2019, also the last manager to complete a full season in charge of Sunderland before Le Bris.
What’s made Le Bris’ stint at Sunderland so impressive is the style of football he’s been able to implement so quickly.
Something that made Alex Neil’s League One promotion squad so successful was their defensive solidity and ability to pick up points without playing pretty football. The squad was already good enough to win games, but we were far too open at the back for us to be successful.
Under Tony Mowbray in the Championship, we had a young, exciting team that played with the handbrake off and looked to outscore teams but often with a lot of naivety at the back, yet Le Bris has found the perfect blend of these two successful teams.
We’re largely solid at the back and it’s incredibly hard for teams to break us down, especially when buoyed by the Stadium of Light crowd.
We’re more than happy to sit in and soak up pressure in our own box whilst also being comfortable with the ball and turning teams over in transition, which won us a large volume of points last season. This was a perfect recipe for a newly promoted team and was a large factor in helping us achieve a seventh-place finish.
We’re now starting to see a transition away from a more pragmatic style, and we’re playing with the handbrake off a lot more often. This has left us more vulnerable at times but it’s certainly something that was needed in order for us to try and progress even further this season.
Not since the turn of the century under Peter Reid has the club finished higher than tenth in the Premiership, with the only other top half finish being under Steve Bruce.
To do this in only your second season in English football and as a newly-promoted club is an unbelievable achievement. This was the first time a promoted club had gone on to qualify for Europe since Wolves did it under Nuno Espírito Santo in the 2018/2019 season.
All of this combined with the rate at which he’s been able to achieve this in just two seasons at the club is almost remarkable in itself.
We often see managers coming into English football for the first time take time to adapt and get their ideas across, but Le Bris has taken to it like a duck to water and has only gotten better with every season. It only took him a few sessions in his first pre-season to work out his core group of players that would fit his system, and he stuck with this small group of seventeen or eighteen players throughout the season.
Let’s not forget that the club underwent an overhaul of the squad in the summer following promotion, and alongside a lot of early business that was completed, Le Bris was able to bed these players in quickly over the course of pre-season, and we came flying out of the blocks.
The man has been an absolute breath of fresh air. He’s bought into the culture and expectations of the club and the area, and has been nothing short of magnificent. He’s also a calm head in amongst the chaos and he never lets his emotions get the better of him.
It’s a compliment to his tactical nous that well-established figures like Enzo Maresca have publicly stated how difficult they have found it to manage against him and have been surprised by the tactical tweaks he’s made in games in order to get that extra ons per cent over the opposition.
There have, of course, been one or two batterings along the way, but not even Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta are perfect!
