Sunderland have a tricky tie against Swansea City coming up this weekend, and Regis Le Bris will surely have to learn from the past to get a positive result this time around.
A midweek bore draw against Norwich was enough to seal Sunderland’s place in the play-offs for this season, though we’ve known that would be the case for a while now.
The Black Cats are destined to finish fourth, but will need to keep momentum going over the course of the next five games before the Championship play-off dates arrive.
A win against Swansea this weekend would go a long way to generating that crucial momentum, but after the last time the two teams met, Regis Le Bris will know that’s easier said than done.
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Regis Le Bris admitted Sunderland were poor vs Swansea, but showed ‘character’ to fight back
Back in December, Sunderland staged a dramatic comeback from two goals down to defeat the Swans 3-2 in South Wales. It was ultimately one of the most exciting moments of the whole season, but Le Bris will probably prefer a more comfortable afternoon this weekend.
Speaking after the game at the time, Le Bris admitted Sunderland made “the worst possible start” to the game, having gone two goals down within the first 17 minutes.
Goals from Dan Ballard, Dan Neil, and Jobe Bellingham turned things around and secured the three points for the Black Cats, and Le Bris insisted he learned a lot about the “character” of his young team on that day.
At the time, Le Bris said it was “difficult to assess the reasons” behind Sunderland’s slow start, but one thing’s for sure, he will have to have figured that out by now or he could be facing a defeat at the weekend.
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Sunderland don’t have what it takes to stage a comeback like that again
In truth, we’ve hardly seen that resilient side to Sunderland since the turn of the year, which is a real concern for everyone connected to the club.
With their fate still to be decided, Sunderland fans aren’t sure if this season has been a success. While the team has outperformed pre-season expectations, there is disappointment with the way the Black Cats fell away from the automatic promotion race over the last few months.
They now go into a game at the Stadium of Light against a resurgent Swansea side that has picked up two wins on the bounce (plus a great point against Leeds United) to move well clear of the danger zone.
The Swans are now a very different proposition under Alan Sheehan, and Sunderland will have almost no hope of battling back from any kind of deficit if they fall behind to this well-organised unit on Saturday.