Sunderland secured their return to the Premier League after an eight-year absence with a win over Sheffield United at Wembley
As the dust settles on Sunderland's glorious win at Wembley, attentions are slowly beginning to turn to the Premier League season ahead.
It's a daunting prospect, given that the last six teams to win promotion from the Championship have been relegated in the following campaign. No one is under any illusions as to how difficult it is going to be for Sunderland to survive, particularly given that they are relatively rarity in terms of being a team promoted without parachute-payment backing over recent seasons.
Yet given the upward trajectory of both the team and the club, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic that Régis Le Bris and his team can spring some surprises along the way.
Here, we pick out for key reasons to be hopeful of a competitive season...
The Stadium of Light will be rocking next season
Sunderland fans will head into the new season fully understanding the scale of the challenge ahead and with the knowledge that there's every chance it will end in relegation. But there'll be none of the apathy some of the clubs bruised by previous relegations might experience. Sunderland will be up for the challenge and determined to make the Stadium of Light as difficult a place to play as possible.
The scenes around the second leg of the play-off semi final against Coventry City were nothing short of breathtaking, from the welcome the fans gave the team bus right through to the unforgettable conclusion. Sunderland have been working with fan groups for a number of months now on ways to boost the atmosphere at home games, and there is a real opportunity now to be grasped. It can't be like it was for that Coventry game every week, but Sunderland can absolutely harness the passion and feel-good factor on Wearside right now. Particularly in the opening weeks of the season, they have to try and make home advantage pay.
No one knows the ceiling of this young squad
While it's clear that the Premier league is a massive step up both physically and technically, there's nothing to say that a chunk of this Sunderland team can't make the step up. It's not a squad of players who have struggled at the level previously, dropping down to bolster squads at the top end of the Championship blessed with parachute payments.
It's a highly-talented squad that has grown rapidly in a very short space of time, and who is to say that can't happen again for a handful of these players? Not all of them will be able to seamlessly step up, but if Sunderland recruit well and a handful of them do then they have a fighting chance.
A number of Sunderland's squad who won promotion from League One quickly settled at Championship level, and played regularly in the team that finished sixth in their first season at second-tier level. Of course the step up to the Premier League is far, far bigger - but top-tier clubs have been sniffing around this group of players for years. The potential is there, it's just how quickly Sunderland can harness it.
Régis Le Bris has already shown his tactical versatility
Teams promoted from the Championship in recent times have often done so with a possession-based style and with a squad build to play that way. One of the issues they can face is that when they get to the Premier League, they struggle to adapt when the opposition's significantly superior quality means they quickly assume the ball.
There's no doubt that there will be games next season where Sunderland are picked off by the superior quality of the opposition, but it's also in the DNA of this team to suffer. They aren't a team obsessed with possession and Régis Le Bris isn't a head coach obsessed with playing a certain way. That was never better demonstrated than the first leg against Coventry City, when they won despite having around 25% of possession over the course of the game. Going into games and seeing little possession won't come as a huge shock to this team, and in truth some of their most unconvincing performances have come in games where the opposition have sat deep and given the Black Cats the ball.
Le Bris has proven he will set his team up to respect the strengths of the opposition, and that will be invaluable next season.
We've got Enzo Le Fée
Sunderland are going to have to recruit sensationally well to have any chance of survival, but Le Fée is the perfect place to start, right?
Continue Reading