Régis Le Bris has royally f***ed it.
He’s chased a new style. It isn’t working and now he’s too stubborn to go back on it.
His stubborness is killing him. Too many players beyond reproach, the same worn out tactics, the same predictable outcomes — and the same style of play not suiting the players we have.
He’s ran out of ideas because he hasn’t got the courage to drop the offenders and to take the risks he needs to take. As a result, the squad has lost its identity because the guiding light at the top
doesn’t know where he wants to be — or he does know and he doesn’t know how to get there.
He has his failings — his like-for-like subs, the way we start games, the general and complete lack or urgency or vertical play, and what kills him more is that we see flashes of the Sunderland that endeared themselves to the fans last season — but he refuses to accept this is the way.
Le Bris deserves so much more.
He deserved more than a summer of speculation about his future which was a thinly-veiled temperature test of the fans’ openness to a new gaffer, and he deserved so much more than the owner not coming out publicly to rubbish them.
He deserved much better than his captain publicly flirting with the idea of returning to his lavish London lifestyle on a six-figure weekly salary…only to bottle it for the fear of backlash and to turn up this season half-arsing it because the mind and the body are in two different places.
He deserves more than players playing like idiots because it’s easier to throw everything into it when things are going well — and you’re the one taking the plaudits than it is to throw yourself out there for the man who guided you to them.
He deserved more than a joke of a summer where the sporting director spent more time flirting with the idea of signing players than actually doing so, not building the depth we desperately needed and not having the courage to be bold in the market like the season before, but instead leaning heavily on the phone book and vibes.
He deserves more than having Michael Proctor as an assistant and a set piece coach that thinks having eleven men defending a corner is a legitimate tactic.
He deserves so much more than what he’s got from the people around him and he can’t move without failing because the board spent most of the summer sat on their sun loungers, chuffing cigars and musing about how great they all are.
So yes: Le Bris has f***ed it.
Five like-for-like subs when the system hasn’t worked for weeks? Bollocks. Not knowing his best eleven? Bollocks. The way we set up? Bollocks. And there’s loads more on him too.
Ultimately, he’s gone. It’s just a matter of time but if there aren’t rakes of others culpable for this, I’ll be damned.
