Talking Tactics: A Jekyll & Hyde double header

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Sunderland are two-thirds of the way through their first triple game-week having faced Watford (A) and Derby (H) — how did RLB have contrasting fortunes?

The unrelenting schedule of the Championship season got underway as September came to a close with Sunderland embarking on their first 'three in seven dayer' of the season ahead of the international break, firstly heading down to Vicarage Road to take on Watford followed by a home double-header of Derby County & Leeds United.

Sunderland faced two very different styles of football across the 180 minutes and saw contrasting fortunes in both of the first two fixtures, firstly suffering a narrow 2-1 defeat to the Hornet's following a string of individual errors on the day which was then flipped in a Jekyll & Hyde manner to comfortably dusting off Derby County 2-0 on the Tuesday evening.

With two distinctly different performances with the same XI across them both, we'll take a look at how RLB summoned a response from his side to send Sunderland back to the top of the table ahead of Friday's clash with Leeds United.

Sunderland Lineup

Sunderland were forced into an additional change from the Middlesborough game the week prior, it was revealed during last week's training Eliezer Mayenda suffered a knock and would see him come out of the side until the international break to be replaced by summer-singing Wilson Isidor for his first start in Sunderland colours.

Sunderland's core shape remained ever present with an unchanged flat back four, accompanied by Dan Neil at the heart of midfield and his two advanced teenagers in Jobe and Chris Rigg forming a triangle in the middle, spearheaded by the attacking trio of Roberts, Mundle and full debutant Isidor.

Given Le Bris' has opted to play much of Sunderland's season so far surrounding possession, Sunderland were expected to exploit the high line adopted by Tom Cleverley's Watford who played with a back three.

Following defeat on Saturday, RLB named an unchanged side on Tuesday evening to seek redemption following the loss at Vicarage Road as in contrast, Paul Warne normally sets Derby up with a traditional back four and therefore would be more of the usual from Sunderland in their second test.

Watford

Saturday saw Tom Cleverly opt for a slightly more aggressive shape with Watford setting up in a 3-4-2-1 shape, Festy Ebosele and Yasser Larouci both came in to replace Ken Sema and Ryan Andrews as more traditional wingbacks than wide midfielders slotting in at wingback in what looked to be a compact 5-4-1 out of possession. The elder statesman of Moussa Sissoko anchored the midfield with Georgian star Chakvetadze given freedom to pick up pockets and drive at the Sunderland defensive line once the press had been bypassed.

Sunderland Suffering from Overloads

The opening exchanges of the game saw Sunderland pushed up against the wall with Watford exploiting Sunderland's desire to match Watford's back three, man for man to break with pace. Dan Neil had been instructed to man-mark Chakvetadze from the off, creating large gaps in midfield that left Jobe & Rigg isolated against quick triangles with Watford's wingbacks & midfield and therefore often left Sunderland's fullbacks isolated against two Watford players following a quick switch of play.

With Dan Neil unable to screen off the usual passing lanes due to Chakvetadze dragging him every which way, Watford were able to build attacks effectively through players dropping into the half spaces to break the lines of Sunderland's press and spread the ball out wide with pace. The first goal was a perfect example of Mundle being caught between wanting to hang on the shoulder of Pollock following the first successful defensive clearances and break away only to leave Ebosele space to creep into the box unmarked to volley home the opener.

Second Half Adjustments

In all honesty, from the point Watford saw the ball hit the back of the net Sunderland began to assert dominance and will be bitterly disappointed that they were unable to salvage anything from this game. Le Bris adjusted his tactics by dropping his wingers narrower and deeper to provide a more compact mid-block and resorted to gaining a foothold on the game through increasing tempo and asking Watford to drop deeper.

Despite asking his wingers to play a more compact role and work defensively well, Romaine Mundle still created several chances throughout the game, completing 5/8 dribbles (the most by any player) whilst also winning 9/15 ground duels and creating 3 chances through his 93% passing accuracy.

Roberts continued to work his usual magic, completing 88% of his passes with three of those into the final third and one important assist to level things back up.

Fingers will ultimately be pointed at Dan Neil for his individual error that gave Watford their only shot on target of the second period compared to Sunderland's four within the same time frame and cost Sunderland the chance of securing a point at the very minimum.

Watford were slowly dragged into playing our way, as soon as their wingbacks became pinned back having to double on our wingers, we were able to give Jobe & Rigg the freedom to receive the ball in the half-spaces and create those triangles that have operated as the base for Le Bris' model during his tenure.

In the end however, Sunderland came away from Vicarage Road deflated and empty handed, I won't spend much longer discussing the mistake itself as Dan will be well aware himself of the mistake and fortunately put it behind him in a mature manner in the following fixture.

Derby

Travelling to the game on Tuesday evening, I among many other fans was expecting at least a couple of rotation changes for Sunderland as they looked ahead to the feature game on Friday evening against Leeds and after hearing Paul Warne opting to make changes himself was shocked to see Le Bris name and unchanged side from Saturday.

Having presented his players an opportunity to rectify the last result there was clearly an intention to get the game won early with the hope of providing a rest for players beyond the hour mark.

Paul Warne decided to take the opposite approach and made four changes from the side that lost to Norwich at the weekend, swapping out all of his wide players with Phillips and Wilson coming into the defence and Chirewa and Harness replacing the two wingers for Derby in what looked to be a 3-4-3 from the initial team sheet. Derby started with both wingbacks in Osborn and Wilson pushing high however following a break in play at the 30-minute mark shuffled to the 4-3-3 seen below.

Slow Starts

Despite there being some criticism that we often start slow in games, I find it quite a redeeming quality of Le Bris that with the exception of the final 10 minutes against Middlesborough, Sunderland have finished each and every one of their opening league games the best side so far this season.

It's clear that RLB has a very good understanding of how to adjust to teams in-game and manages to have us finishing the stronger side even when results are against us. This started no differently however with Derby very quickly imposing their physicality through several set-pieces and harassing of players during dead balls which led to some early pressure similar to the way Watford approached the game.

Attacking Low-Blocks

After surrendering possession early on, Derby got stung with several quick breakaways by Sunderland to no avail and by the 30 minute mark, goalkeeper Zetterstrom took a tactical timeout to allow Warne to instruct his side to drop deeper and compact the pitch.

From this point on Sunderland were asked to take control and find a way through the low block as Jerry Yates became the only player behind the ball in an attempt to pin Sunderland's centre halves from advancing into the Derby half during the build-up.

Sunderland struggled to create too many clear cut opportunities due to the structure of Derby's shape as players were unwilling to commit out of possession and provide Sunderland's midfield space to exploit.

Jobe found himself in exactly one of those pockets following a misplaced pass by Chirewa and unleashed a great shot beyond the keeper, interestingly Jobe's goal came from a 0.04xG compared to his earlier missed chance with a higher 0.11xG.

Poacher Wilson

Following the restart after half-time Warne had a decision to make, hold his compact shape or attempt to press Sunderland higher. He opted to push on and left space in behind for Romaine Mundle to attack which saw Wilson Isidor poke home his second goal in two games.

Readers may recall I watched a large amount of match footage when scouting Isidor during the summer and now having watched over 100+ minutes of him in a Sunderland shirt I can't help but get excited at the profile of player we have.

In games where Sunderland require a quick twitch movement and pacey forward akin to the likes of Aubameyang or (dare I say it) Alexander Isak, Isidor offers a unique hybrid of both winger and forward in the attributes he possesses.

Both his goals came in a near identical fashion, showing clever concise movement to attack between two defenders and catch them blindside for a glancing finish, something which we yearned for at times last season, simply someone to show the attacking intelligence to get to the goal line for our cutbacks.

In Isidor we have a striker that shows much more of a poacher's instinct, scoring once against Watford with an xG of 0.4 and then again Derby with an xG of 0.65 whilst also completing 13/16 passes with only 8 touches in the opposition box across the two matches.

Whilst Mayenda hasn't put a foot wrong this season, Isidor offers a different archetype of approach and gives RLB a variety of styles to adopt depending on the opposition.

Looking Ahead

As Leeds appears on the horizon, Sunderland will be looking for at least a point in order to head into the international break maintaining their position inside the top two.

With the return of Ballard and Mayenda likely, paired with the introduction of summer signings Samed, Abdullahi and Milan Aleksic followed closely by Aaron Connolly and then the return of some of our long-term absentees the club looks to have really cemented itself as a top six contender this season and with a squad to bolster the performances, things look good.

With Leeds looking like an automatic promotion contender I expect this game to have a similar feel to the fixture last season.

Leeds are a team that loves to retain possession and Sunderland love to work off the ball, with tiring legs I doubt we'll be able to match intensity for a full ninety however expect a slightly more aggressive but similar in nature game plan to that of Middlesborough a fortnight ago.