Régis Le Bris could be the man to turn Sunderland into a competitive force again!
Yesterday at 01:00 AM
It's still early days but Le Bris is quietly making a name for himself, and a coach accomplishing this on Wearside has been a long time in the making.
Back in July, few Sunderland fans would've known about or even heard of Régis Le Bris. A French coach of relative obscurity, he was the man tasked with steadying the ship after a chaotic 2023/2024 campaign.
We didn't know what to expect or what we could achieve under Le Bris and to be honest, this was quite nice.
So many teams in this league have brought in proven managers who are part of the 'merry-go-round' of gaffers who've been underwhelming in most of their roles. Some are taking a punt on the unknown; Sheffield Wednesday, for example, have done it with German Danny Röhl, who after keeping The Owls up looks to be struggling again, with one win in six.
Stoke City are a prime example of a team who've tried to achieve good results with steady, well-known names.
Paul Lambert, Nathan Jones, Mark Hughes, Gary Rowett, and Alex Neil have all managed Stoke in the last eight years, and few have lasted more than a year.
They've now tried to bring in an unknown entity by appointing Narcis Pèlach, a coach formerly of Norwich City. If they achieve success under the Spaniard, it would be a big sign that this new approach works.
Another fellow Championship side in Watford have become a joke thanks to the number of managers they've gone through in recent years.
In the last ten years, Watford have had twenty one managers, both permanently and in caretaker roles, but they've gradually declined in form and feel like a side that could be bouncing around the division for a while.
This list of recent managers is a blend of familiar names who've trudged from post to post, and unknown coaches who've tried to implement their style at a club that seemingly has no patience for anyone.
Sunderland have been guilty of this in the past, and our own managerial merry-go-round has had more than a few lame horses on it.
The League One years brought about coaches who did nothing more than tread water on Wearside, before Lee Johnson and then Alex Neil got us moving in the right direction.
Appointments from Johnson onwards have made sense to an extent with the benefit of hindsight, except for those weird eight weeks under Michael Beale.
Le Bris represents the latest chapter of Sunderland under Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Kristjaan Speakman, and the model is shifting through the gears. Tony Mowbray overachieved but had us playing brilliant football in the process, and thus far, Le Bris has built on this.
An appointment of someone like Le Bris has been on the cards at Sunderland for a while now. A foreign head coach whom the fans would know little about and could be described as a 'turbo nerd' tactician and reader of the game is someone I've imagined Dreyfus has been keen on for a while.
His early success has come about as a result of a refreshing approach to coaching.
He wants to improve everything and has called on his players to better themselves even after a defeat. Le Bris is keeping us on the ground whilst also explaining in very quiet and unassuming ways how he plans to maintain our progression.
The appointment was very different to what we've done for a long time and we can all hope that appointing an unfamiliar man to the position leads to a better outcome than previous examples.
