Eliezer Mayenda is the talk of the town right now. He’s arguably Sunderland’s most in form player and he’s bound to feature against Coventry City.
Going into the game against Frank Lampard’s Coventry City, Regis Le Bris has yet another striker dilemma on his hands, and it’s a dilemma that only seems to become more difficult with each passing week right now.
Last time out, in the 1-1 draw against Preston, Le Bris opted to start both Eliezer Mayenda and Wilson Isidor, but to little avail, with Isidor facing criticism for his performance on the night, as Mayenda was surprisingly brought off the pitch.
Mayenda wasn’t happy about being substituted that day. It comes after he’d scored three goals in two games, looking like the much better option up top although Isidor remains a prolific name with 12 goals in the league this season.
Who starts against Coventry remains to be seen. But ahead of the weekend, Le Bris has been talking about another youngster who he hopes could take inspiration from Mayenda.
Regis Le Bris urges Milan Aleksic to take inspiration from Eliezer Mayenda
Speaking to The Northern Echo before the game at Coventry, Le Bris was asked about the situation regarding summer signing Milan Aleksic. The Serbian international arrived in a £3.5million deal from Radnicki in his native Serbia last summer. Since however, he’s featured just four times in the Championship, starting only one game.
Sunderland fans have had mixed reviews of Aleksic so far. But Le Bris rates him highly, saying: “Milan is a really young player, talented with many young skills. I think this year is very important for him to connect with the country, culture and the club. Sometimes players need time.
“What we saw so far was this period of connection and adaptation. At some stage it will click. He’s building his foundations and we’ll see for the next stage.”
Le Bris then offered Aleksic the example of Mayenda; how he was out of favour at the start of the season but has since burst into life, and into the starting XI.
The Sunderland boss continued: “Eli is a really good example. I don’t think we expected Eli at that level at the beginning of the season. We were searching for strikers but we had a good striker. He needed one year to adapt, even if he didn’t play much last season. He didn’t play a massive amount of minutes last season but the experience was really useful for him.”
The other Sunderland player who Regis Le Bris urged Milan Aleksic to idolise
This isn’t the first time that Le Bris has spoken about Aleksic and used another one of his Sunderland teammates as an example of what to follow, doing so with Tommy Watson earlier in the campaign.
Le Bris said of Watson and Aleksic back in November: “Sometimes you are waiting for the right opportunity. It was the case for Tommy Watson, for example.
“He waited for maybe, six, seven, eight weeks without opportunities, and now it’s done. He started, probably will start again.”
For Aleksic, maybe this entire season was simply about bedding into a new country and a new club, learning the language and so on.
We saw last summer the likes of Watson and Chris Rigg feature heavily in pre-season and go on to become key first-team players, and the same might be in store for Aleksic who is clearly a player with ability, given the sheer amount Sunderland paid to sign him.
Sunderland’s game at Coventry City kicks off at 3pm on Saturday.