A small but powerful post-match moment summed up Sunderland’s progress under Régis Le Bris...
While I was performing my post-match duties in the mixed zone deep in the bowels of the Stadium of Light, a national journalist leaned over and asked 18-year-old Chris Rigg if qualifying for Europe had entered the minds of Sunderland’s players after their superb start under Régis Le Bris.
Let me set my stall out early – Sunderland are some way off that sort of conversation just yet. We all know the festive run of fixtures is brutal, and AFCON will test the depth of this young squad in the new year. There will be bumps along the way, and Le Bris himself would be the first to caution against any premature excitement.
But in fairness to my colleague, he was only doing his job as a journalist – trying to fish out a line that might resonate beyond Wearside, something that captures the wider footballing imagination. Because the very fact that this question is even being asked, in the corridors of the Stadium of Light after a Premier League game, is itself a remarkable sign of progress.
Sunderland are seventh in the table and just five points off the top. Granted, as another reporter quipped to me after the game, the clocks haven’t even gone back yet – so any talk of Europe remains wildly premature. But what a joy it is that this conversation can even take place.
Not so long ago, Sunderland were treading water in the Premier League, drifting towards the inevitable double relegation and four long, sobering years in League One. Those were seasons of austerity, apathy and anger. Supporters endured not just the heartbreak of defeats but the suffocating fear that the club they loved was slipping into terminal decline.
Under the ownership of Charlie Methven and Stewart Donald, Sunderland were a club shrinking by the week, with talk of black holes in the finances and the club “running out of money” during the Covid shutdown. It felt like Sunderland’s proud story might end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
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Now, it’s an entirely different conversation. A decade ago, the chat was about survival and lost identity. Today, it’s about tactical flexibility, continental recruitment and an 18-year-old homegrown midfielder being asked about European football. That’s the transformation. That’s the progress.
Suppose you’d told any Sunderland fan in the summer that after eight Premier League games they’d be unbeaten at the Stadium of Light, level on points with Chelsea, sitting above Newcastle United and nine points clear of the relegation zone. In that case, they’d have bitten your hand off.
This is a Sunderland side with unity, purpose and belief – traits that have been in desperately short supply on Wearside for far too long. Whether or not Europe ever becomes a genuine possibility is irrelevant right now. What matters is that Sunderland are back competing, back dreaming and back where they belong – in a Premier League conversation that finally feels hopeful again.
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