The key challenge Régis Le Bris will face as he looks to write more Sunderland history next season
The Sunderland head coach has already established himself as one of the club’s best managers of the modern era.
It was just about the most typical Régis Le Bris response possible.
In an interview following the end of the campaign, the Sunderland head coach responded to a question about the demands of European football with an answer that made clear the depth of analysis he had already done. Sunderland would need more players and have to be prepared because playing in Europe can cost teams ten Premier League points, he explained. Then, and you can almost see the shrugging of the shoulders that came with this answer, he said: "It's not boring."
If anything sums up Le Bris's success on Wearside, it is this. A strong work ethic and forensic approach to preparation and analysis, combined with an impressive ability to stay calm in the face of every challenge management can throw up. This campaign will be one of highs, lows and strong emotions. Le Bris's ability to stay consistent through all of the drama of the past two campaigns is a key reason why he is now in increasingly rare territory as a Sunderland boss, the first since Steve Bruce to be leading the club into a third full season.
It would perhaps be too dramatic to say that this will be his biggest challenge yet, as winning promotion without parachute payments and then surviving in the Premier League as a newly-promoted club are up there with the very toughest tasks in English football management. Yet is is also clearly true that this season will test Le Bris's management in new ways.
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He is a head coach who thrives on stability, preferring continuity both in selection and tactical approach. He likes to let players build instinctive relationships all over the pitch through time and patience, while the level of preparation that goes into games has consistently blown insiders away over the last two years. Europa League football and an increased schedule will demand rotation, however. Le Bris will need to lean on a deeper pool of players than last season, and will likely have to be more proactive in his substitutions to protect the core of the side who he will need to replicate last season's heroics. Preparation time, whether it be on the training ground or in the analysis room, will be slashed in the winter as the Black Cats consistently play twice a week.
The head coach is unlikely to be daunted all the same. He set great store in how Sunderland finished last season, arguing that it would define how they approached the next. He took great encouragement from the fact that his players responded not just by showing their motivation to qualify for Europe but by playing some of the best, most attacking football they had managed all season. Though many feel Sunderland's overperformance against their data in the first half of last season leaves them vulnerable to second-season syndrome, there is clear evidence that Le Bris has already begun the next stage of this team's evolution.
Le Bris knows better than anyone how quickly things can change in football and will be acutely aware of the challenge he will face leading his squad through the packed schedule with expectations on Wearside now raised, but at this stage it would be foolish to write off his prospects of making more history.
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