Sitting on a low chair inside his office at Sunderland’s training ground, a Premier League newcomer ponders a big question. Just how does a promoted team survive its first season in the top division?
‘Well, we have assessed really closely the last teams who came up and managed to stay in the league,’ Regis Le Bris, the Sunderland manager, tells Daily Mail Sport.
‘We try to understand their methods. I think we have done it and seen it. At the same time we have our own identity. We need the right combination.’
On Saturday at a full and revamped Stadium of Light – £10million alone has been spent this summer on improving Sunderland’s home – Le Bris and his players will return to the ultimate stage after an eight-year exile.
Their absence has been quite the story, involving nine permanent managers, a four-year residency in League One and an occasionally excruciating Netflix series that is now an indelible part of their history. Then, from nowhere last season, a promotion via the play-offs that comprised a last-minute semi-final victory against Coventry and a 95th-minute winner at Wembley.
French forward Enzo Le Fee swapped Roma for Sunderland when friends told him not to last January, and he says: ‘I have witnessed a Rome derby but that night against Coventry was the loudest ever. We need more of that’
Regis Le Bris tells Daily Mail Sport all about Sunderland’s plans to buck the trend of promoted teams going straight back down
The Stadium of Light will host Sunderland’s first Premier League match for 3,009 days on Saturday, when West Ham come to Wearside
It will be 3,009 days since Sunderland’s last Premier League match – a 5-1 defeat at Stamford Bridge – when West Ham visit on Saturday at 3pm. It feels pleasingly old school and Le Bris says he is hoping for a lid on the emotion. He would have better luck bottling smoke. But the 49-year-old Frenchman does at least have a handle on how his team will play.
The last six promoted teams went straight back down with a piddling average of 21 points, often on the back of strangely expansive football. Le Bris has noticed.
‘Look, the gap between the Championship and the Premier League is massive,’ he says. ‘We want to keep our identity which is to be well organised and pragmatic, not naïve. So the balance between that and creativity is the thing.
‘It’s about playing each game. If a team like Manchester City find a high press (being played against them) they don’t play through. They play long. We are a team from the Championship, so to play short in that position doesn’t make sense.’
Le Bris’ own journey to the Premier League has also not been linear. When Sunderland’s 28-year-old owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus made him the fifth manager of his short time in charge in the summer of 2024, he had just been relegated from Ligue 1 in France with Lorient.
It was a gamble but last week Le Bris sat in a summer managers’ meeting with Pep Guardiola, Mikel Arteta and the rest. He could be forgiven for thinking he had arrived.
‘It was fine,’ he shrugs with a half-smile. ‘We just have to win points against these managers. We are in competition now.’
In a corridor along from the gym at the Academy of Light, Sunderland’s big summer signing and new captain stops briefly.
Granit Xhaka is Sunderland’s new captain after joining from Bayer Leverkusen
Ivory Coast winger Simon Adingra (right) has joined from Brighton for £21million
‘Life is good,’ says Granit Xhaka and at this time of year, with the sun shining and the grass cut, that’s how it always feels.
Football’s roads are rarely straight, however, and this big club’s outlook was not always thus. For many of those chaotic years in the wilderness, it wasn’t the Premier League that this six-time champion of England craved but merely some respectability.
Sitting on the bench at Bolton as his new team lost a League One game 6-0 in January 2022, Irish defender Trai Hume did not see Sunderland’s future in glamorous terms. Indeed the manager who had just signed him, Lee Johnson, was sacked immediately afterwards.
‘I never would have believed this would happen so quickly,’ Hume tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘I didn’t have any thoughts of playing Premier League or even getting promoted.
‘The manager was sacked and everything changed. There was a lot of that to come. But last year the boss came and saw we just needed steadiness. Now the training ground, the stadium and the pitches have all improved. Even the gym and canteen. Luckily the players are getting better too.’
Back in winter 2022 the Netflix cameras were still around, deep in to season three of a series that cut to the soul of a club seemingly intent on tearing itself apart. To this day, the legacy of Sunderland Til I Die clings to Sunderland like a sea fret but is used as a reference point.
Sunderland’s new away shirt carries lyrics from its theme tune on the collar while its impact still resonates in the dressing room.
In series one manager Simon Grayson described leading Sunderland as like being on the Titanic but Le Fee reveals: ‘I watched it before I signed and fell in love.
Le Bris, pictured with director of football Florent Ghisolfi (left) and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman (right) has signed a new three-year contract
Omar Alderete, one of 11 new signings for Sunderland this season to boost their quality and depth
‘It just showed the fans’ passion. It gave me more energy to come here when people thought I shouldn’t and get promoted for them.’
When his loan from Roma became permanent in June, Le Fee was Sunderland’s £19m record signing. He didn’t wear that badge for long. Senegal midfielder Habib Diarra, a scorer against England at the City Ground in June, soon arrived from Strasbourg for £30m.
Louis-Dreyfus comes from money – to say the least, since the family wealth runs into the billions – but Sunderland’s data-influenced transfer policy of carefully buying players aged 24 and younger has been clear. Buy low and sell high has been a successful strategy.
Sunderland have a Category A academy and four graduates started last season’s play-off final, including the day’s captain Dan Neil and winning scorer Tommy Watson, subsequently sold to Brighton for £10m. Among 11 players signed this summer for a total of £146.5m are two teenagers, two 20-year-olds and a 21-year-old.
Equally, Le Bris and his sporting director Kristjaan Speakman have been trying to fix an obvious problem. This is a team with no big-league experience. Hence the arrival of former Arsenal captain Xhaka, 33 next month, and others like 31-year-old defender Reinildo from Atletico Madrid who has played 25 times in the Champions League and 49 at international level for Mozambique. Ivory Coast winger Simon Adingra has arrived from Brighton.
Xhaka had his share of problems at Arsenal, overcoming an on-field spat with his club’s fans before leaving on good terms for Bayer Leverkusen, where he won the Bundesliga unbeaten. But his Premier League know-how is his selling point and he is the first player bought on Louis-Dreyfus’ watch who the club accept will never be sold for profit.
‘Despite wanting to align with the identity of the club – which is about young players – the balance is really important,’ says Le Bris. ‘Reinildo will give young players support and confidence while also being more demanding.
‘Granit also likes the challenge and you need that to stay alive, I think. It’s the same project, but adapted for the new level.’
Reinildo, who has 25 Champions League appearances to his name, has joined from Atletico Madrid
Habib Diarra is another experienced international to arrive at Sunderland this summer, having scored for Senegal against England in June
Sunderland have been prudent since Louis-Dreyfus took over four years ago and have financial headroom. Commercial activity has also rocketed. Shirt sales used to come in at about 30,000 a year. Since returning to their traditional partner Hummel at the start of last season, they have hit the 100,000 mark.
‘I understand this is not London,’ nods Le Bris when asked about luring foreign players so far north. ‘The club is really attractive because of history, identity and momentum. You also have to be financially competitive and we have used the levers well.’
Some players view change as a threat. That’s not an option as Sunderland try to make the biggest step.
‘It’s just necessary,’ shrugs Hume. ‘The jump is drastic. The boys here knew there would be signings and changes. We just accept it.’
Le Fee knows his manager well from their time together at Lorient. He has noticed subtle changes.
‘When he was young and he was different – like a director,’ says Le Fee. ‘Now he is closer to the players. He has that confidence to be that way.’
Sunderland have undoubtedly reached the Premier League quicker than they hoped. The club’s 2023 accounts outlined a five-year promotion plan.
‘I don’t work like that,’ laughs Le Bris. ‘What we have done makes me feel proud. But football is like life. It’s unpredictable. If it happens quickly – like that beautiful day at Wembley – you are lucky and take it. If it doesn’t, you stay consistent and you work hard.’
Sunderland sealed their place back in the big time with a 95th-minute winner against Sheffield United at Wembley in May
In the reception of Sunderland’s training base is a wonderful image of 1973 FA Cup final goalkeeping hero Jim Montgomery. Now 81, he will be at Saturday’s game in a stand recently named after him.
‘We had a North Stand, East Stand, West Stand, South Stand,’ explains David Bruce, Sunderland’s chief business officer. ‘Really? What does that even mean? Now it’s the Jimmy Montgomery Stand – our greatest legend. To be able to give him the news is something I will always remember.’
Outside Bruce’s office opposite the stadium you can smell new tarmac cooking. Across the way, there has been a queue at the ticket office since before it opened that morning, even though Sunderland have sold all 38,000 season passes for the first time in their history. They could have shifted more.
Bruce was once a Sunderland academy goalkeeper and recently returned from a job with Major League Soccer in the United States. He is excited by what lies ahead on the field but says this is about more than football. After the problems of previous ownerships, his primary focus has been to reconnect a club with its city and supporters.
‘We have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get our heart and soul back,’ says Bruce, who – among other things – has decided to give time-served older fans free season tickets this season.
‘We haven’t done these things for publicity. We have done them because they are right. It’s about revolving this club around what makes us special – and that’s our fans and their obsession.
‘We had owners in the past who were too quick probably to jump past that but all that love was there and actually documented in Sunderland Til I Die.
‘Yeah that was a very bumpy time to be a fan but it pointed to a connection and that no matter what happens you can’t shake this thing off. It’s the only thing in your life that you can’t change.
Jim Montgomery (in green) will be honoured with a stand named after him
‘Here when the team lose, Monday productivity at Nissan goes down (the car manufacturer’s local plant employs around 6,000 people). They have the data. But football is a hard industry as only one team wins. What happens to everyone else? Ours has been a story about the everyone else.
‘We have simply tried to build a different kind of club. That’s been our focus and I like to think it’s reflected in our team. Any fan seeing a player come through the system connects differently with them. But getting the Premier League means you have to balance that with big-ticket signings.
‘We have lads who have picked us over other clubs and talent that we have developed to represent the city where football is the only thing that’s ever talked about.’
Back at the training ground, Le Bris considers the impact he’s had on joining up the pieces of a broken football club. When he arrived, for example, few Sunderland fans had heard of him.
‘I don’t hear it,’ he says, batting away the question. ‘As a manager you live between this office, the pitch and my house. That’s it.
‘We are only focused on the job. If it’s hard, let’s work hard. It’s a bit easier, let’s work hard. That’s my way. I like the feeling we are building something new.’
Sunderland’s only objective this season is survival. Away from the field, recruitment has been cautious. They will wait until next spring before considering whether it’s prudent to push on with the next phase of the club’s re-emergence. There is room for a stadium expansion but no plans yet.
The £10m invested in the ground this summer has been on improving concourse and media facilities while Michelin-star chef Tommy Banks heads up a new Banks on the Wear dining facility.
Le Bris insists he did not hear the noise around his arrival and does not pay attention to it
The Stadium of Light will be packed to the rafters at all 19 of Sunderland’s home games, having sold out their 38,000 season tickets
Burns talks a lot about making supporters smile but the actual football can make that difficult at times and he knows it. Relegation can’t be allowed to torpedo Sunderland. ‘We want to be sustainable for the long term,’ he says.
There will also be two games against Newcastle this season. Since Sunderland relegated their local rivals by beating Everton late in the 2015-16 season, the clubs have trodden different paths to the point that the only thing left in common is perhaps geography.
Sunderland, of course, have not lost a league match to the enemy since 2011, winning a record six in a row at one stage, but suffered a feeble 3-0 defeat on home soil in the FA Cup third round 18 months ago on a day marred by errors, from Dan Ballard’s 35th-minute own goal to the decision to deck out the away end bar in Newcastle colours. Lessons were learned.
How, then, does it feel to live so adjacent to the richest club in the world?
‘Respect to what they are doing and how they are approaching it,’ says Burns, diplomatically. ‘But we want to try and do it our way.
‘It’s not as immediate but the journey is more rewarding and that is part of the fun side of football.
‘There is a way to go about it – the type of players that you buy – that can be very different to what is happening up the road. We will find our space and operate in a way that’s right for us.
‘There is enough special sauce in Sunderland that if we take it to the world we will be really attractive. We want to be everyone’s second favourite club.
Jermain Defoe scored the winner against Newcastle in 2015, the fifth of six consecutive victories for Sunderland in the Tyne-Wear derby
But Dan Ballard’s own goal began a 3-0 defeat by Saudi-owned Newcastle in January 2024 in the FA Cup third round
‘We also have lots of areas around here like Durham and South Tyneside that can swing between the clubs. There are almost half a million people there. How can you focus on those areas and try and own the region as much as you can?
‘It’s too early to tell but seeing people on the streets wearing Sunderland merch fills me with a great deal of hope. That’s definitely changed.’
A warm midweek morning at the beach and Roker Pier stretches out into the shimmer. This season, an image of Sunderland’s most recognisable landmark is imprinted on a blue away shirt. The City by the Sea, the locals call it.
On Saturday the Stadium of Light – just a mile and a half away – will be awash with the thrill of it and those on the sand wearing club colours may well be there.
Sunderland are not alone. There will be optimism at Leeds and Burnley too. But this is a club, team and manager who have decided on a way of doing things and know the great challenge will be sticking to it against the odds.
‘The manager will not change if we lose,’ says Le Fee. ‘He will just try again and make us better.’
Enzo Le Fee knows Le Bris well from their time at Lorient and has faith in his ability to keep Sunderland up
The starting fixtures are West Ham, Burnley, Brentford, Crystal Palace. A chance for early momentum, perhaps.
Up in the stands, they have their job too. Nineteen times at home in the league. At Sunderland, they open the gates three hours before kick-off and there is usually a queue.
‘Also away from home we will need them,’ exclaims Le Bris. ‘Yes, they are so happy because after eight years they are back.
‘It will be hard, we know that. We don’t know what the future is but we will need our fans in the tough situations. They are so important. It starts now.’
