The rhetoric regarding possibly replacing Régis Le Bris must look baffling to outsiders looking in.
Inside two years, he’s taken a club that finished sixteenth in the Championship to mid-table in the Premier League and a great chance of getting a top half finish (and Europe — I’ll keep banging that drum until there’s no longer a drum to bang.
We’ve also secured our top flight status for another season with three games to spare, and haven’t at any point this season looked as though we would get dragged into the relegation fight. So why are the voices suggesting Le Bris should be moved on getting louder and louder?
It’s a tricky one and in all honesty, it’s an indictment of the cut-throat ways of football and instant gratification that some fans are all about these days — yet at the end of the month, Le Bris will join an exclusive club as a Sunderland head coach that’s been in charge for two seasons.
In a world where the sport is unforgiving and impatient (Watford, for example, have had four managers in this time and are currently looking for their fifth), Sunderland are enjoying a period of stability after years of the complete opposite. Sticking with what we know would make a lot of sense, but the club has shown internally elsewhere in the last two years that if they think they can upgrade, they won’t hesitate to do so.
There’s a distinct possibility — perhaps even a probability — that Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Florent Ghisolfi have a shortlist of head coaches whom they’ll approach should they think they’re an improvement on Le Bris. We’ve done it with sporting directors, coaches, and players under this regime, and there’s no reason to suggest the gaffer is immune from this.
The questioning of Le Bris isn’t exactly knee-jerk, but it comes from some spells of form this season where positive results haven’t been forthcoming.
We’ve reached a point where there are some amongst us concerned about going a few games without a win in the Premier League — whether this is arrogance or evidence that expectations have risen is for the individual to decide.
For what it’s worth, I think we’re in a better place with Le Bris at the helm; realistically, given our current position in the food chain, I don’t believe there are many managers out there that are better than what we have, would want to come, or are available.
We could finish in the top half of the Premier League, more than fifteen points ahead of the relegation zone and above teams that’ve been in the top flight for years, and people would still think we can do better. At the end of the day, the people who are in the best position to see what we can do to improve and decide when to pull the trigger when the time is right to do so.
There’ll be comings and goings in the summer as we look to build on a fantastic first Premier League season.
Le Bris has been integral to getting us to where we are now, and I firmly believe he still has a chapter or two to write on Wearside.