Sunderland have four games of their Premier League campaign left and face Wolves this weekend

Régis Le Bris says he will not experiment with his Sunderland XI and bench between now and the end of the campaign despite the club's Premier League status now being all but secured.

The Black Cats have four games to go and have achieved their primary target for the campaign, but Le Bris set out a clear stance when asked if there was any consideration being given to additional rotating and offering fringe players extra opportunities.

“For me, we are in the same position as the first game of the season," Le Bris said.

"We want to play every game with the best XI, the best 16, the best 20 players available for the team sheet. This is my mindset. It didn’t change after the 40-point mark, and it doesn’t change now we have got to 46. We will see what will happen at the end of the season."

What RLB has noticed in Sunderland training this week

Le Bris said though there was always a risk of his players dropping their levels now that their primary target had been achieved but added that they had responded positively to their heavy defeat against Nottingham Forest this week.

“I think the players are always ambitious," Le Bris said.

"We are ambitious, but at the same time, it’s important to stay humble. If you start dreaming, maybe you can drift a bit with your standards and think, ‘It’s just enough to be on the pitch and we will beat Forest’. I don’t know if we had these ideas in our mind, but you have to understand the process. For us, that is probably the lesson we have learned from the previous games. We played against Villa and Forest, who are the semi-finalists from the Europa League, and we conceded nine goals and got zero points. That means something about our level at the minute. It doesn’t mean it was the level for the rest of the season, but it is what it is. We have to stay humble, and the next challenge is to be competitive and win. If we win, we will have three more points and we will see what that means on the table.

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“I think the players’ reaction was positive. They are alive, that is really clear. Sometimes, we can feel the end of the season in the training sessions, but I don’t think that is the case. They might feel exhausted, it is a long season, especially the first season in the Premier League, and we have a really young squad. But I don’t think that is the case. I hope we will have a strong reaction at the weekend.

“It’s hard to assess. We had a similar conversation five games before the end and we lost five times, but we didn’t lose on purpose. We tried to win, but it was impossible to break the sequence. I don’t know why because we worked hard. Then, we went into the play-offs and they switched on - so it exists. We are trying to work hard and give a perspective to the team, but we never know if there is something just off a little bit in their behaviour, daily standards or whatever. It is possible."

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