Régis Le Bris discusses his big Romaine Mundle dilemma and explains plan for Sunderland youngster

Régis Le Bris says he will be patient with Romaine Mundle as he looks to unlock his long-term potential.

Le Bris is experimenting with different ways of getting Mundle into his Sunderland XI, with the youngster featuring in a number of different positions over the first three competitive games of the season. The 21-year-old was one of the standout performers through pre-season and caught the eye regularly, particularly with a superb display against Bradford City. His obvious issue as things stand is that his favoured left-wing role is currently occupied by Jack Clarke.

The Sunderland head coach that won’t necessarily stop him getting in the team and while enthused by his progress, Le Bris also warned that the winger is still very much a work in progress.

“You saw at Preston that he started on the left side, then moved to the right and finished in the ten position,” Le Bris said.

“Against Sheffield Wednesday he played on the right side. It's a possibility because he has many qualities. He's still young and needs to improve his consistency because he can be very high and then at other moments, it's more difficult for him. This is the process of improving young players.

“His performances are still a little unstable, because I think wingers have a very different profile to other players. A centre back, for example, we like when they are stable and very consistent. Sometimes not so high, but never very low. For the wingers it's very different because it is always 1-v-1 - I think the personality is different. They can be very high, so for example when Romaine played against Bradford he was very impressive and that was very interesting. After, maybe we have one, two games not quite at that level. But we trust him and believe in his quality because you can see how high he can go. The process to develop him is to find this consistency, and it starts during the training sessions. The main thing is this potential that you see, and then we develop the consistency. With some players it takes two months, six, one season... you don't know. I hope it will be quick with Romaine!” Le Bris’ options in the wide area will soon be strengthened further by Ian Poveda, who played 45 minutes for the U21s in a 1-1 draw with Newcastle United on Monday night.