Early pre-season fixtures against non-league opposition rarely set pulses racing, with most regarded as little more than open training sessions as players ease their way back following the summer break.
That said, the double-header against South Shields and Gateshead will be among Sunderland’s most keenly scrutinised friendlies for years.
Not because there is anything riding on the results, of course, but because fans - and journalists, for that matter - will be searching for any and all available clues as to the influence of new head coach Régis Le Bris.
What teams will he pick? What will be the balance between senior players and youngsters? What system will he play? How will he use this player or that? What signs of his footballing ‘identity’ will be on show? And what will he say afterwards?
Not since 2018 have Sunderland fans gone into a pre-season knowing so little about what lies ahead.
That was the last time the Black Cats appointed a new boss over the summer, and six years ago it was Jack Ross who arrived on Wearside as pretty much an unknown quantity - south of the Border, at least.
Since then it has been on-the-fly appointments all the way, from Phil Parkinson to Lee Johnson, Alex Neil to Tony Mowbray to Michael Beale.
All of the above had worked in England previously, and all had a track record in the Championship and/or above on which they could be judged and conclusions drawn.
Le Bris is in his first job outside France and therefore has no EFL experience, with his two sharply contrasting seasons in charge of Lorient allowing optimists and pessimists free rein to build their case accordingly.
Still, at least Le Bris walks into a situation immeasurably better than that which faced Ross.
Ross had to contend with a club on its knees after suffering the ignominy of back-to-back relegations which left it in the third tier, weighed down by a crippling wage bill, and with an aging squad peppered with players who did not want to be here and, in the cases of the unlamented Papy Djilobodji and Didier Ndong, some who flatly refused to return.
Ross effectively had to rebuild from the ground up, holding on to those he could - and those who could not be moved on - while bringing in a raft of new players, largely on free transfers.
His first friendly, a 1-0 defeat at National League North Darlington, featured five of the six new arrivals who had arrived by that point, with Sunderland fans getting their first look at Alim Ozturk, Tom Flanagan, Reece James, Chris Maguire, and Dylan McGeouch.
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Fast forward to 2024 and Le Bris comes into a club that simply needs a spark after last season fizzled out so alarmingly after the turn of the year.
If last season suffered for being compared to the previous thrilling campaign in which Sunderland harnessed the momentum gained from promotion by reaching the Championship play-offs, the coming season will benefit from having such a low bar to clear to be judged an improvement on what has been served up so far in 2024.
Le Bris has a couple of new players to integrate, with experienced Republic of Ireland and ex-Preston North End midfielder Alan Browne having this week become the club’s second senior signing, and more new faces are expected, but the bulk of the squad he has inherited are in their early 20s with their best years ahead of them, and - so far - the club has retained star men Dan Neil, Jack Clarke, Dan Ballard, and Anthony Patterson, while teenager Chris Rigg has already committed himself to the cause.
That is a good start.
It would be wrong to make any snap judgements based on tomorrow’s low-profile games, but they will at least offer some very early pointers as to what the future holds under Le Bris.
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