Sunderland scores a goal without assistance: Régis Le Bris has the Mackems back on track.

Sunderland scores a goal without assistance: Régis Le Bris has the Mackems back on track.

The guy who reads the football scores on the radio every week must have been thrilled to hear our results from the previous season because he could rattle off the above with confidence and accuracy most of the time. We looked about as capable of scoring as Jozy Altidore with an empty net, managing just one goal in our last six games, or eight in fifteen if you go a bit farther back. That terrible, indeed!

This is despite the fact that seven players from the starting lineup against Sheffield Wednesday on Sunday, including Clarke, Roberts, Jobe, and Rigg, either started or came off the bench in the crushing 0-2 loss that ended the previous season against the same team.

None of the summer acquisitions to date appeared on the field on Sunday, and by 46 minutes, the goal scoring was finished, long before the board lit up to signal a change. So how did Régis Le Bris transform such a helpless squad into a team that can execute the kind of quick-fire destruction that we witnessed the other day?

I’m not sure how he accomplished it so quickly; maybe he’s just the French Guardiola? – I will, however, attempt to explain “how he’s done it.”

God, it’s nice to see him again. To do the flying, fragile fullback justice, I would have to write a thousand more words about how much he means to our team.

The short version of what I wrote about this season is that he provides balance to Sunderland.

Le Bris made the startlingly astute decision to… play him. We really care about him, therefore all you have to do is play him. In addition to being left-footed, he is tall, swift, powerful, confident in the challenge, skilled with the ball, and aware of the location of the enemy net.

I could go on and on about Dennis for hours, but I’ll just assume you get the idea and go on.

We will score a lot more goals similar to that this season as a result of our intense aggression. Even though playing with the front foot is so easy, it has the power to completely change a team. Long may it persist.

This one is both a player and a coach. First, to give the staff the credit they deserve—Michael Proctor was mentioned by name after the final whistle—the free-kick routine that made room for Dennis Cirkin to nod in the opener was nothing short of brilliant.

Rightfully so, Gareth Ainsworth praised it during Sky’s halftime show. In an easy-to-against move, we gave Cirkin the freedom of the box to get underneath and score Patrick Roberts’ exquisite dinked cross by building a wall of bodies between him and the Wednesday defenders.

We’ve severely needed this kind of skill in recent years, especially during that horrendous stretch of what seemed like thousands of corners without a goal. The fact that we’ve already scored several goals from set pieces is encouraging for Le Bris’ future.

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