David Elliott says…
Le Bris absolutely deserves full support and respect for what he’s done and how he can take us further.
I accept that there have been some woeful performances so far this season and there is no doubt that there is a real stubborn streak in Le Bris the needs to be addressed constructively within the club. However, I fail to see what calling for his head will achieve now or in the longer term.
He remains very intelligent, generally tactically smart (I can’t name a more tactically aware manager in my
fifty-plus years of watching the Lads) and a thoroughly honourable bloke that doesn’t rant, rave and complain that the world is against him — like some managers.
The club has let him down with its sudden incompetence behind the scenes when everything seemed to be going smoothly. The players haven’t been putting their bodies on the line in fighting for the cause as they did last season, and yet we’re only two points behind Manchester Utd.
I think there needs to be some very honest and open discussions within the higher echelons of the club, and Le Bris needs to be given the chance to continue doing his work. We as supporters really need to support and back him and the team on Thursday and Sunday.
We have to be Sunderland.
Dean McDonald says…
It feels very much like the dreaded ‘vote of confidence’ that’s usually followed by a dismissal after the next loss.
I hope this isn’t the case and I would love Le Bris to be the man to turn it around after everything he’s done for us the last couple of years.
For me, he has enough credit in the bank to be given this chance, and I hope the club feel the same way. We’re in a rough spot at the minute and something needs to change, hopefully Le Bris can work out what that is quickly to save our season and his job.
Ian Clark says…
It’s reassuring to hear.
Taking everything into account, Le Bris has done an incredible job — remember who the last permanent head coach was before him and compare and contrast.
In no other walk of life would you dismiss someone who has done a great job for 2 years and then had a difficult time for two months. Yes, he’s made some mistakes with team selections and a “safety first” approach but the main reason for the league position is the horrendous individual errors stretching from the first game at Ipswich to the latest game against Coventry.
As a head coach, there’s little you can do when experienced professionals are gifting the opposition goals almost every game.
There were times when Mikel Arteta was struggling at Arsenal and Unai Emery was struggling at Aston Villa, but they stuck with them because they were good coaches. I’m not saying Le Bris is in that class but he deserves more than being binned off at this stage.
John Wade says…
The club had to do something — inaction was not an option.
This vote of confidence tells me that Le Bris has at least a couple of games to get his house in order, and he deserves at least that leeway. It was only a few weeks ago we were celebrating his one hundredth game in charge and trying to narrow down his top ten, which was tricky!
He hasn’t become a bad manager but he has shown too much of a stubborn attitude towards mixing it up.
In my opinion, it was criminal not to change things at half time on Saturday, then when he did, Jules Ahoka and Jocelin Ta Bi — arguably his two most productive outlets recently — were nowhere to be seen.
As I said on 2 Up, 2 Down, swapping right backs was a mystery to me. The squad is good; the manager has proven he’s good, and he needs to let the handbrake off and show a bit of ambition.
Changing manager might seem like a quick fix but as has been seen over the last twenty five years and numerous changes in the dugout, it’s not the long-term solution it might seem.
Alex Ferguson went through a bad run and could have been binned. The same happened with Mikel Arteta, and there were rumblings at Arsenal even when Arsene Wenger was in charge. Stability is what we want and is what we have at the moment.
If Le Bris can be persuaded to deviate from his tried and tested approach, it just might save him.
John Wilson says…
I’m absolutely delighted that the club have taken the sensible approach to this, and backed Le Bris.
I was getting very disillusioned with the amount of talk and discussion over his potential sacking. Everyone agrees that he’s a very clever, astute tactician and coach. Everyone agrees these are the best times in decades and everyone agrees that stability and consistency are key. So how does it make any sense to get rid of him?
Not everything is always going to be successful and ideal.
Are we supporters who only support and back the team during happy times? Granted, if things continue to nosedive, action might be needed. But that isn’t now, with Sunderland two points off Man Utd, and still two points better off than similar opponents last season (substituting Ipswich and Coventry for Burnley and West Ham)
I sincerely hope we can turn this around. We’ve not had the rub of the green, and players’ mistakes and poor attitude are the biggest culprits. He hasn’t lost the dressing room…onwards and upwards.
Josh says…
I think it’s a seriously difficult situation.
I don’t think it’s in the club’s best interests to replace him now. But if we’re still bottom at Christmas time, I think it’ll be very hard to get a quality replacement in that situation. I understand the people that are calling for his head, because unlike last year most of the lads don’t look like they want to be out there.
I just think it would be wiser to give him the benefit of the doubt and to figure out how to get out of this hole that we’re stuck in.
Matthew Donne says…
Absolutely delighted we’ve given Le Bris the support. We’ve had important players come out and state that it’s on them for the poor league form and we’ve got to allow him some time to turn this around.
I appreciate he’s getting some calls wrong, and some of his perceived stubbornness is causing issues but this man has made the dreams of an entire fanbase come true with qualifying for Europe and how we’ve changed as a club and a team. Do things need to improve? Yes. Do we need to axe Le Bris? No.
I’ll eat my words should this slump continue further but with the players on his side and taking accountability for their own performances. He’s more than earned the right to try and arrest this slump and calls for his head just don’t sit well with me.
Phil West says…
I wasn’t actually expecting the club to break cover and comment on Le Bris’ position and it must be said that this backing has come in the form of local journalists relaying snippets of PR fluff to their audience rather than an official club statement.
As Dean says, this feels like a classic ‘vote of confidence’ and perhaps a final spurring on of Le Bris ahead of two tricky games — the outcomes of which may go further to deciding his future after Saturday’s witless loss to Coventry.
Can he turn it around? Yes. Will he? Who knows. But the reality is that we’re in a hell of a bad position in the league and although the lower half of the table is congested, we’re facing a savage run of post-international break games from which we somehow need to take points to have a chance of reaching mid-table security.
Le Bris is an analytical coach by nature.
That’s fine and it’s served him very well during his spell as Sunderland boss, but at this moment in time, you don’t need metrics to highlight the challenges we face — the league table and schedule will do that far more effectively and I really hope there’s a sense of what I would term “controlled urgency” within the dressing room as a season of promise threatens to turn ugly.
In the meantime, victories against Dinamo Zagreb and Chelsea are badly needed.
There needs to be a change of approach and personnel in order to get us playing in a more positive and effective way, and most importantly, the players need to stop blundering their way through games like they’ve got cement shoes on, start putting some effort in and prove that they have the fight, the resilience and the ability to turn this slump around and demonstrate to a good, decent and principled head coach that they’re still playing for him.
The very thought of this transformative figure leaving Sunderland on a note that would make Peter Reid’s exit look like a glorious farewell sickens me, but this is where we are.
After some puzzling selections in recent games, Le Bris isn’t without fault and he needs to try something different, but he’s not solely to blame for our ills and I want to see a far higher level of application and a better attitude from the Lads in their next two outings.
Do that, pick up the results and maybe things will look a touch brighter. The stakes are high for everyone.
Tom Albrighton says…
I’m not moved by this news based on the fact the dreaded ‘vote of confidence’ usually means a cut-off point has been determined by the club and when things get to that stage, minds have already been made up.
As for Le Bris staying or going, I’m again unmoved.
So far, this season has seen us play some truly abysmal football whilst being subjected to some of the worst application from the players we’ve seen for a short while. At times, Le Bris has spoken about these things as if he has no influence on them and whilst his calm and balanced approach has yielded many a positive result, it’s also failed to elicit a response thus far.
The tricky part of whether Le Bris should be backed or not falls in the fact that the arguments for sticking with him are mainly forged in the past and rely heavily on sentiment, whereas the argument against is emboldened by Sunderland being rooted to the foot of the table.
Either way, I wouldn’t be offended by either decision and can see the merits for both — my only concern is if the timescale for Le Bris’ position being untenable comes when our Premier League survival looks all but sealed.
Whatever decision is made, it’s imperative it remains until the end of the season as to give the current situation a stay of execution to only then renege on any vote of confidence would be to close the stable door long after the horse has bolted.
The question that remains is not one of what Le Bris should change, but one of “Is he is capable of delivering that in a timely manner?”
