With four games of the Championship season played, there is a slightly surprising name at the top of the table as we head into the international break.
By Ian King
Sunderland had an underwhelming 2023/24 season, finishing 16th and with the main talking point being what felt like the interminable pursuit of a new manager to replace the disastrous Michael Beale.
When a decision was finally reached, there was a feeling that it wasn’t the one that the club had actually wanted. Will Still had been commonly understood to be their main target, but he couldn’t be persuaded to leave Reims (before later heading to Lens), so they ended up going to Régis Le Bris instead. Le Bris was certainly an interesting choice. He continued the club’s French connection, arriving at the Stadium of Light from Lorient, where he’d spent the previous twelve years coaching the youth team, B team and eventually first teams, but Lorient had been relegated at the end of the previous season, which naturally raised questions for supporters of his next destination.
But now, with four games of the season played, Sunderland supporters have good reason to feel enthused. The team have started their season with four straight league wins, scoring ten goals and conceding just the one, putting them two points ahead of West Bromwich Albion at the top of the table. And those four wins have been mighty impressive. At home they’ve seen off Sheffield Wednesday with a very convincing 4-0 win and the freshly-relegated Burnley. Away from home, The Cardiff City Stadium and Fratton Park are never easy places to visit, but they came away from those matches with 2-0 and 3-1 wins.
In the summer transfer window, the big talking point was whether the club would be able to persuade Jack Clarke, their top scorer last season with 15 goals, to stay. The answer to that question turned out to be negative and Clarke went to Ipswich towards the end of August, but if anything this seems to have had a galvanising effect upon the rest of the squad. Certainly, the two games they’ve played since his departure have seen no drop-off in their impressive start to the season.
As such, the managerial travails that the club underwent last season are already starting to feel like a distant memory. The decision to sack Tony Mowbray in December 2023 with the club in 9th place in the Championship table was certainly a perplexing one. In a division in which a number of other clubs are steroid-pumped with Premier League parachute payment money, to what extent should it have been expected that the team should be pushing at the very top end of the table?
True enough, they’d finished the previous season in 6th place in the table, but with this having been their first season back in the Championship following a four-year exile in League One, it seems reasonable to suggest that just getting into the play-offs was a huge achievement in the first place and one that would be difficult to match. And on top of that, at the time of Mowbray’s sacking the team were just three points off sixth place in the table and a play-off spot.
If it was a gamble, it’s a gamble that failed. Michael Beale was Mowbray’s replacement, but three months later he was sacked after twelve games following the shortest managerial spell in the entire history of the club. The rot that had set in on the season, however, couldn’t be treated. Sunderland only won six league matches of the 27 that followed Mowbray’s sacking and they finished the season in a distinctly underwhelming 16th place in the table, while any hopes of reminding their extremely noisy neighbours Newcastle United that they still existed feel completely flat when, after having been drawn to play each other in the FA Cup Third Round, the Magpies coasted to a very comfortable 3-0 win at The Stadium of Light.
Mike Dodds took over the running of the club for the remainder of the season following Beale’s ignominious departure from the club, but there was little in the last three months of their season to suggest that he could be considered a permanent replacement. Will Still, the manager best known as the manager who Reims liked so much that they paid a €25,000 fine for every match that he was in charge while he completed his UEFA Pro Licence, was evidently the man that Sunderland wanted to replace him, but Still eventually walked away with what was reported as “concerns over investment and the make-up of staff”.
Ironically, after the long and ultimately fruitless pursuit of Still, it only took three weeks for them to alight on a replacement, and Le Bris certainly seems to have got his feet under the table at the Stadium of Light quickly. Romaine Mundle, who played alongside Jack Clarke in the academy at Spurs, certainly seems to be taking his chance. On the evening of Clarke’s departure for Ipswich he scored the winning goal against Burnley, and followed that up a week later by scoring their third goal at Portsmouth. It’s the sort of transition that will leave the club’s supporters with a warm glow as we head into this international break.
Of course, with a club the size of Sunderland there will always be expectations, and everybody–including by all reports Regis Le Bris himself–knows how toxic the Stadium of Light can turn when things start to turn sour. But it’s only six years since the club was plummeting from this very division, still in convulsions following years of mismanagement under former owner Ellis Short. Things didn’t improve much under his successors, and his successors’ successors have also tripped at points, as could be seen with the hasty decision to sack Tony Mowbray. But things are going well as of now, and what is the start of the season if not a time to dream of better? Sunderland supporters can be forgiven their daydreaming, following their team’s excellent start.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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