Regis Le Bris has just about wrapped up his preparations for his first season at Sunderland.
The Frenchman joined Sunderland in June and has been part of their entire preseason schedule, picking up three wins, two draws and two defeats.
Le Bris is just two days away from guiding the Black Cats into their Championship opener against Cardiff City and will be desperate to start the season on a high.
Sunderland are yet to sign a new striker, while they will also be without four players in Dan Ballard, Jenson Seelt, Niall Huggins and Ian Poveda.
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Le Bris has one ‘main concern’ ahead of Cardiff clash
Le Bris appears confident that they will actually sign a forward though, while his ‘main concern’ lies elsewhere.
Speaking in today’s pre-match press conference, the head coach said: “The main topic for us is consistency. I think we can play very well during many phases and long minutes as well, but we also have a lack of consistency… and in a league like the Championship, you need to be consistent.
“We have this confidence too, because we know that we can reach a high level, but the whole performance is the ability to keep that level for a long time. So this is now my main concern as a head coach, I think.”
Consistency often cost Sunderland last season
Le Bris is bang on with Sunderland’s issue of consistency, as we saw on so many occasions last season that they played well in one half and completely crumbled in the other.
Whether it was the players’ running out of energy or they simply didn’t know what to do, it cost the club a lot of points and has to be resolved.
Sunderland didn’t have that problem at all in the previous campaign and were often shutting down teams across the whole 90 minutes, winning by a three-goal margin on six occasions.
The squad is definitely talented enough to keep up the high quality football for a whole 90 minutes and also a whole season, but Le Bris needs to make it his mission to ensure his work off the pitch can help them there too.
This weekend’s performance against Cardiff will give fans a good idea of what to expect, but they shouldn’t be too down if it isn’t perfect because there is still plenty of work to be done, while the club will surely bring in a striker before deadline day too.