'Impressive' - Regis Le Bris gives verdict on Sunderland home support

Regis Le Bris experienced the Sunderland Stadium of Light for the first time on Sunday, and it's fair to say it left a big impression on him.

Sunderland supporters at the Stadium of Light /

Regis Le Bris gave the Sunderland home support almost as positive a review as they gave him following his first match in charge at the Stadium of Light.

Sunderland demolished Sheffield Wednesday 4-0 on Sunday to make it two wins out of two in the Championship for Le Bris.

It wasn’t necessarily the win that was so encouraging, though, but the manner of it, and the Frenchman appears to already be fully understanding what Sunderland is.

Speaking to reporters after the game, Le Bris said: “The stadium was very impressive. “When the team represents the spirit of the community, the link is very strong.

“The way we played, the way we defended, the fans liked that and when they like it, they can give us extra energy. Then, the rhythm and the energy is higher."

What is immediately encouraging about Le Bris, perhaps even more so than the tactical appreciation he’s shown so far, is that he seems to have immediately grasped that the Sunderland support can be a huge advantage.

Far too often, managers have arrived at Sunderland and seemed to see the fans, and the expectations they have, as a burden that makes life more difficult for them.

Michael Beale is an excellent and obvious recent example of that, of course. He arrived giving the impression that he thought he should be deferred to by the supporters as some kind of football oracle.

When supporters rallied against him and his dour football because, well, they knew far better than him what this squad was capable of, Beale went of the offensive, talking as if they were rogue elements in a Michael Beale hero story that he had seemingly already written in his own head.

There was a real sense during that grim couple of months that it was Sunderland fans vs Michael Beale, and that’s not how it should ever be.

Le Bris, by comparison, has immediately seen the one enduringly undeniable truth of Sunderland AFC. Peter Reid knew it, Sam Allardyce knew it, and Roy Keane knew it. You can never engineer success at Sunderland without first igniting the passion of the fans. Invite them to come with you and they will carry you a lot of the way.

There has been a lot of talk over the years as managers have come and gone at a relentless pace about creating an identity at Sunderland. It’s all been nonsense. The identity of this club is cemented in the very heartbeat of the city and the people. It’s relentless, raw passion and scrapping like starving terriers for every crumb you can get. It’s fighting for every ball and throwing everything at it. It’s having a go. It’s never backing down from, or out of, a challenge. It’s about not necessarily being better, but being braver.

The identity has always been here. We’ve just had too many managers who couldn’t, or wouldn’t see it. The early signs are that Regis Le Bris is not one of them.