Sunderland had hoped to secure a loan for Jewison Bennette in the closing days of the UK transfer window

Régis Le Bris says that Jewison Bennette could still leave Sunderland on loan after a deadline-day loan to Charlton fell through at the last minute.

Bennette was all set to join the League One club after they made a late enquiry for the 20-year-old, but ran out of time in finalising the deal. With Bennette not in Le Bris's first-team plans as things stand, it left him facing another few months limited to U21 football. Le Bris said the club were searching for a possible new solution. Though most European leagues have closed their winter windows, there are still some potential destinations for Bennette including Turkey, the US and Australia.

"In this transfer window, we still have this problem in the last minutes," Le Bris said of Bennette's loan falling through.

"It could still be possible to find a club because there are some markets that are still open, so we will see on that one."

Bennette was not involved on Friday afternoon as the U21s returned to action against Wolves at the Academy of Light.

Though Sunderland did endure some late frustration in the closing stages of the window after Jayden Danns's medical revealed a back injury, Le Bris is satisfied with the club's work.

He is hopeful that Danns will make an impact and says the capture of Enzo Le Fée, alongside the return from injury of some of Sunderland's summer additions, should mean he has a deeper and stronger squad for the run in.

Regis Le Bris delivers verdict on Sunderland’s transfer business

"There are a lot of topics," he said.

"The first is the players who left the club to find minutes and game time. Aaron was a permanent and the others were a loan, these were important moves for them to play because when you are not involved in the main squad it is difficult to improve your level. It was important for them.

"The second is the retention of our top talents. It's important to remember that when you have good players, you can have interest [from other clubs]. We kept them with us, they trust and we trust them and there is a confidence that is shared which is good news. The third one is the returns because I have said this before, we had a lot of injured players in the first half of the season and I hope they will be available for the second half of the season. Salis is one example. We have five or six players like this and we expect that they will give something else to the team. The final topic is the recruitment process, we recruited two. We recruited Enzo and we can see after four games that he will suit our game style. The connection with his team mates is getting better and better and the last one is Jayden Danns. During the medical assessment we found an underlying issue so we are going to have to wait a little bit about the timeline of his availability. I hope it will maybe be a couple of weeks but I don't know, we will have to see."

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