Sunderland can't afford Régis Le Bris appointment to fail

What a week it has been on Wearside.

If all that has not whetted the appetites of Sunderland fans ahead of the new season, nothing will. Roll on August 10!

Joking aside, this has been an important week for the club.

The appointment of Regis Le Bris to take the reins as head coach has brought to an end a search that became a saga. But the cheers that could be heard when the news was confirmed owed more to an outpouring of relief than of joy unconfined.

It is perhaps fitting that the arrival of the Frenchman was greeted with the Mackem equivalent of a Gallic shrug by supporters who will have known little - if anything - about the former Lorient boss until word began to filter through that he was heading this way.

Those fans had understandably become impatient after waiting more than four months for a new head coach to be announced, and it is a fair bet that the majority were less than impressed to find that the Chosen One had left his previous post in the wake of relegation from the French top flight.

Equally understandably, Sunderland’s official statement welcoming the new man not so much glossed over that inconvenient truth as completely ignored it, instead pointing to the fact that Le Bris had led Lorient to a tenth-placed finish the season before last - his first as a senior head coach - and talking up his record of developing young talent and his alignment to the Black Cats’ ‘playing identity’.

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• Richard Easterbrook: Sunderland can finally look forward with Régis Le Bris appointment
• Kieron Brady: Régis Le Bris will come to Sunderland enthused and hungry

As far as Sunderland fans are concerned, Le Bris arrives with no name-recognition, no prior knowledge of the Championship or English football, no significant tangible achievements to his name, but no significant baggage - barring last season’s relegation mishap - either.

He will effectively start pretty much from scratch and as such can at least expect Sunderland fans to back him and wish him well because, now that he is here, it is in everyone’s interests that he succeeds.

Sunderland confirmed the appointment of Regis Le Bris as Michael Beale's replacement (Image: PA)

Whether, as a fan, you start out a Le Bris sceptic, true believer, or agnostic, he at least deserves an even break. Beyond that it is up to him to seize control of the narrative.

And the only way he can do that is is by producing results, preferably while encouraging his side to play the kind of attractive, attacking, football that became the Black Cats’ trademark when they reached the Championship play-offs the season before last.

He will need a lot of help.

Last season Tony Mowbray, Michael Beale, and Mike Dodds were all hamstrung by the club’s failings in the transfer market, over which they had little - if any - control, given that recruitment is ultimately the responsibility of sporting director Kristjaan Speakman.

Sunderland’s last three transfer windows have been, to put it politely, very poor and Speakman cannot afford another flop - and certainly not on the scale of last summer’s clunker, which would leave Le Bris badly exposed.

On the other hand, the very fact that Sunderland’s top brass made such a hash of things last season, sacking Mowbray, appointing and sacking Beale, then allowing Dodds to oversee a truly dismal final three months of the campaign, could work in Le Bris’ favour.

Quite simply, they cannot afford to see him fail so perhaps he will be given greater backing in the transfer market than his predecessors.

He is precisely the kind of young, Continental, coach that Speakman and owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus have been eyeing from the moment they arrived at the club.

He is their man. And their fates are now entwined with his.