When Sunderland made the decision to sack Michael Beale on February 19, few would have thought their search for a new head coach would take 125 days to complete before Régis Le Bris was appointed on June 22.
Sunderland’s perceived patience and methodical approach to identifying a candidate intrinsically aligned to their philosophy led to a growing frustration and anger among the fanbase for what, on the outside, has not felt such a smooth process given the number of candidates linked with the vacancy.
Sunderland had to deal with the setback of missing out on their main target Will Still after the former Stade de Reims boss opted to remain in France with RC Lens when they approached the 31-year-old with a late offer, just as Sunderland felt they had a deal agreed in principle.
With Still out of the picture, majority owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman reverted back to their suggested five-man shortlist, which brought their attention to another head coach in Ligue 1 in Lorient’s Le Bris.
The 48-year-old has just completed his second season in senior football management having spent the vast majority of his post-playing career in youth set-ups in France developing younger players – a trait which undoubtedly attracted the Frenchman to the Sunderland hierarchy.
Le Bris had a somewhat unspectacular playing career as a midfielder around the French region of Brittany with Stade Rennais, Laval and Ronse before retiring at the age of 27 to move into a coaching career where he soon returned to Roazhon Park as Rennes’ head of academy coaching in 2004.
Le Bris’ success with Rennes’ youth level stood him in good stead having guided his team to the under-18s national title as well as France’s equivalent of the FA Youth Cup, the Coupe Gambardella. Le Bris remained with Rennes for a number of years before making the switch across Brittany to rivals Lorient in the summer of 2012 where he took up the role of director at the Les Merlus’ training centre.
Within three years, Le Bris achieved similar success with Lorient having clinched the under-17s French title before he was handed control of the club’s reserve team the following season. During his time with Lorient’s training centre, Le Bris oversaw the emergence of young talent such as Mattéo Guendouzi, the former Arsenal midfielder capped more than a handful of times by the French national team now plying his trade in Serie A with Lazio, Illan Meslier, Leeds United’s No.1 goalkeeper and Enzo Le Fée, who last year made the switch across Brittany to Rennes amid links with Manchester United.
Le Bris’ role within the training centre was to provide a structure for those players in order to enhance the primitive stages of their careers whereby they could be sold on at an increased value – much like the model Sunderland are wedded to under Louis-Dreyfus and Speakman.
In that regard, Le Bris’ background and profile offers quite the distinction from that of Sunderland’s first choice, Still, and he would actually go on to enjoy a more successful first campaign in senior football than the Belgian after being promoted from Lorient’s reserve team in 2022 when replacing Christophe Pélissier.
Prior to Bill Foley’s investment into Lorient last January, they were a club which, it can be argued, lived within their means as far as lavishly spending money was concerned, with the sales of key assets such as Guendouzi and co being integral to their success.
Foley, the American businessman who owns the National Hockey League’s Las Vegas Golden Knights, owns Premier League side Bournemouth and has recently acquired a stake in Scottish Premiership side Hibernian as he looks to grow his ‘multi-club’ model whereby he can acquire talent from his own teams, as has been the case between Lorient and Bournemouth over the course of the last 18 months.
Yet when Le Bris was first appointed head coach in 2022, the objective was more towards steering Lorient clear of relegation as opposed to any advances towards a European place. And it’s something Le Bris managed in style as he took the Breton club to a 10th place finish in his first full season as a head coach, four points above Still’s Reims, with the joint-fifth youngest squad in the division.
Within that campaign, Le Bris got off to a flying start by winning eight of his first 10 games as head coach at Stade du Moustoir, losing just one of his opening 12 matches and scoring in all but one of those games. It was a dream start to life in senior management, and one which saw Lorient climb as high as second in the Ligue 1 table. Although defeats to Nice and Paris Saint-Germain followed, Le Bris had Lorient sitting fifth by the time the break for the Qatar World Cup arrived.
The return to league action saw a big drop off in form from Le Bris’ side, something which was also impacted by the sale of two key players in January in Terem Moffi, on loan to Nice until the end of the season before an obligation-to-buy for a reported €30million, and Dango Ouattara who joined Foley’s English experiment, Bournemouth, for a reported £20m.
The forward pair started a combined 35 of 36 games for Le Bris’ side and had contributed a combined 23 goals and assists between them. It was a significant blow to Le Bris, and one he was unable to really recover from in his first full season as a head coach as Lorient dropped down the table to still finish in a respectable 10th place – the club’s highest finish in Ligue 1 since the 2013-14 campaign.
Le Bris’ first season, coupled with his success as a developer of young players in France, led to interest in his services in both France and England with Nice and Leeds both linked with a move for the Frenchman who had agreed a long-term contract with Lorient in 2022. That meant a sizable compensation package which, eventually, resulted in Le Bris remaining at Stade du Moustoir as Nice, instead, moved to bring in former Sunderland target Francesco Farioli, while Leeds appointed Daniel Farke.
But with Foley’s investment now established, Le Bris was tasked with improving on his first season in charge during the 2023-24 campaign – another which was hindered by the sale of key players last summer including striker Ibrahima Kone, who had scored seven goals the previous season, Le Fée, the stylish midfielder who made 11 goal contributions before a big money move to Rennes and even Adil Aouchiche, who made just 11 appearances under Le Bris due to an initial series of injury problems in the early part of the season as he made the move to Wearside.
Le Bris was given greater control over recruitment last summer which left plenty to be desired, and is ultimately one of the factors which worked against him, as Lorient would go on to be relegated last season on the final day – a feat club president Loïc Féry described as a ‘monumental failure.’
Le Bris’ side went from being competitively mid-table to having the worst defence in the division last season. Lorient held the third lowest xG at 37.2 compared to 44.5 in Le Bris’ first year, scoring nine fewer goals (52-43), as per Fbref.
A closer look at some of Lorient’s stats show they were ranked third lowest for shots in Ligue 1 last season, dropping two places from the 2022-23 campaign, but despite their lack of shots at goal, Le Bris’ teams are efficient when it comes to the percentage of those shots being on target when ranking sixth and fifth across each season.
Le Bris side were ranked 11th in Ligue 1 for completed passes last season, above Still’s Reims if we are to consider Sunderland’s alternative head coach option, and seventh for their pass completion percentage at 81.5 per cent. Lorient were also ranked 11th for passes into the penalty area and progressive passes, while averaging 46.3 per cent possession in games.
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When it comes to what Le Bris will bring to the Stadium of Light, however, one of the more telling stats is Lorient’s No.1 ranking for touches inside their own defensive penalty area in both season’s he was in charge, while also ranking third and first for touches in their own defensive third. That suggests how Le Bris is keen to focus his approach on building out from the back by inviting teams to press high up the field which means there is a high level of trust and responsibility placed upon the goalkeeper and centre-backs – a point emphasised by the successful dribble percentage in that area of the field, as per Wyscout.
To further that notion, Opta Analyst suggests that Lorient’s key zonal areas, where they enjoy more than 55 per cent of their total touches, tends to come directly inside their own penalty area and the immediate space outside their own box. In contrast, Le Bris’ team tend to give up the wings to the opposition with more than 55 per cent of their touches coming out wide.
“As far as our approach to the positional attack is concerned, we indeed work a lot on numerical superiorities at the start of the game and in midfield.” Le Bris was quoted by the FC Lorient Actus blog in 2022.
Again, what does this mean for Sunderland?
When his appointment was confirmed, sporting director Speakman highlighted how Le Bris’ playing identity aligned with Sunderland’s preferred choice – one can suggest the brand of football established under Tony Mowbray in the 2022-23 campaign. But there may be one or two slight tweaks to that given Le Bris’ tendency to be a little more indifferent when it comes to the intricacies of his build-up play compared to Mowbray's slick, counter-attacking team.
Additionally, Lorient registered the fourth highest PPDA (passes per defensive action) last season, which suggests Le Bris does not necessarily instruct his teams to be high pressing themselves – the lower the PPDA number the greater the pressing intensity.
Last season, Le Bris transitioned from the 4-2-3-1 system which had served him so well during his first year as head coach – a system he used in all but seven games – into a back three in either a 3-4-3 or 3-4-2-1 variation.
Unlike what we have seen from Sunderland at times over the course of the last season, where their positional maps show a discrepancy when it comes to average positioning, Le Bris’ team have a clear back three, and positional structure, mapped out as shown below.
Quite which system Le Bris will favour with Sunderland remains open for debate given how much they have rotated formations themselves since their return to the Championship in 2022, having utilised both a back three and a back four.
For the most part of last season, by combination of both injury issues and personnel, Sunderland favoured a back four in either a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-1-4-1. But with the likes of Aji Alese and Dennis Cirkin likely to be fit for Le Bris, the option of using a back three with aggressive wing-backs also holds some value.
Le Bris’ style of play was evident in his very first competitive game, a local derby with Rennes back in 2022. Lorient clinched a 1-0 win over their rivals courtesy of an Arthur Theate own goal but it was also the first time in which Lorient had kept a clean sheet against Rennes in 16 attempts.
The goal itself came via Le Bris’ philosophy of playing out from the back, as can be seen in the images below.
Rennes have triggered a high press on Lorient’s defence and Vincent Le Goff, who is in possession of the ball. There are six opposition players closing in on Lorient’s defensive third as Le Goff avoids a turnover by playing the ball back to Julien Laporte
In possession, Laporte has little time to seek out his next pass as the press from Rennes continues to close in on the edge of his own penalty area. Laporte can either go wide out to his centre-back partner, Montassar Talbi, or extend further into right-back Gedeon Kalulu.
Instead, Laporte plays the more risky pass through the centre of the field into captain Laurent Abergel, who has created space behind the first line of Rennes’ press.
Laporte’s pass is decisive into the feet of Abergel who is quickly closed down by an opponent who has now realised the potential danger of Lorient being able to escape the press due to Laporte’s pass.
Abergel is able to meet Laporte’s pass ahead of his marker and quickly sweep the ball out to the right wing for Kalulu who now has acres of space to advance into, with Le Bris’ side taking out as many as six Rennes players with their patient approach.
Kalulu advances unchallenged into the Rennes half and the final third before searching for Moffi’s run into the penalty area.
Moffi’s run forces Theate into an uncomfortable defensive action which ends up turning the ball into his own net as Le Bris began life in management with an impressive shutout victory over their neighbours.
That victory over Rennes came in a 4-2-3-1 system, one which Le Bris kept until the final month of the season when transitioning into a back three for the goalless draw with Marseilles in April 2023. Le Bris then utilised a 3-4-2-1 formation for Lorient’s final seven games of the Ligue 1 season, with the standout display coming in a hugely impressive 3-1 win in Paris over champions-elect PSG.
The switch in system saw Le Goff tucking inside as a third centre-back while Kalulu moved forward into a right wing-back role. The linchpin of the move was Lorient’s midfield pairing of Abergel and Bonke Innocent – the Nigerian influential in the win at the Parc des Princes.
Innocent often received possession in that holding midfield position to draw in PSG’s line of press which freed up space on the wings for Kalulu and the retreating wide forward, Romain Faivre.
With Faivre and Le Fée operating in free roles behind Kone, it allowed the wing-backs in Kalulu and Darlin Yongwa to operate extremely high and stretch the pitch when Lorient attacked as shown in the image below as Faivre advances.
What’s interesting throughout this move is the space Le Fée constantly manages to find between the PSG defenders – something which eventually proves clinical.
Le Bris’ teams are built upon patience and the opening goal in the French capital demonstrated that. The previous image mapped out Kalulu’s run from the right wing but Faivre opts to retain possession which means Kalulu must recycle his run back into midfield.
As a result, striker, Kone, then targets the space in the channel vacated by Kalulu to drag the centre-back away from his desired position. It’s an area of the pitch where Le Bris’ teams tend to favour.
The run of Kone, however, becomes a decoy as Kalulu then heads into the space beyond Kone to receive the ball from Abergel, who has moved over towards the right side to aid Faivre.
This interchanging allows Faivre space to run into towards goal and takes out three PSG defenders, thanks to some good play from Kalulu to thread a pass through the defenders.
All the while, Le Fée has remained Lorient’s main threat in the penalty area and continues to hold a good degree of space from his markers, with Kone now also providing an option at the near post.
Faivre is able to drive into the area and cut the ball back towards the penalty spot where Le Fée is on hand to guide home and open the scoring to conclude what was a 25-pass sequence from Le Bris’ team.
Although Le Bris’ team were aided by Achraf Hakimi’s red card midway through the first half, Lorient continued to dictate things down that right side of the pitch when working their overloads, with the second goal following a similar pattern.
Once again, it was Innocent who started the final stages of the move from the centre of the field as he plays a confident ball out wide to Faivre, assisted by the dummy from Le Fée to fool the defender and allow Faivre that little bit more time and space on the ball.
Like the opening goal, Faivre is able to drive into the penalty area and works his way to the byline where Lorient now almost have an overload towards the back of the penalty area.
Faivre’s low cross takes a slight deflection which falls kindly for the left winger, Yongwa, who makes no mistake from close range.
It was only the second time PSG had trailed at half-time at the Parc des Princes all season and Le Bris’ team would come away with a significant victory as Bamba Dieng added a late third on the break.
Le Bris’ decision to change formation was interesting and yielded a mixed bag of results in those final seven games with three wins, three defeats and one draw.
But despite losing Le Fée and Kone last summer, Le Bris’ system appeared to get off to a solid start in Ligue 1 last season with a goalless draw at PSG, a 1-1 draw with Nice and a 4-1 win over Lille to start the 2023-24 campaign.
Although the style of play in being patient in defence lends itself to a more counter-attacking philosophy in being able to capitalise on beating a high press, Le Bris’ team did exhibit traits of their own high pressing in that 4-1 win over Lille when racing into a 2-0 lead inside the opening 10 minutes.
With goalkeeper Lucas Chevalier in possession for Lille, Lorient had as many as five players advanced inside the final third in search of a turnover, with Chevalier’s pass into Ignacio Miramon proving to be the trigger for Le Bris’ side.
Captain Abergel is the one to lead that press as he intercepts Miramon on the edge of the penalty area to create a clear sight of goal.
With Chevalier out of position, Abergel comfortably beats the goalkeeper to give Lorient the lead.
And Le Bris’ team doubled their advantage immediately from the kick-off when quickly turning over possession and flooding forward in numbers.
On this occasion it was Sirine Doucoure who advances into the penalty area before teeing up Julien Ponceau as both defensive midfielders registered on the scoresheet which suggests how Le Bris encourages his midfield players to be capable of contributing in both defence and attack.
Despite an encouraging start last season, Le Bris won just one of his next 16 Ligue 1 games after that victory over Lille before a run of seven straight defeats in the closing weeks of the season. It was the most turbulent period of his short managerial career to date, with suggestions of fractious relationships with certain players but, more importantly, a breakdown with the club's president Féry.
It left Lorient in an almost insurmountable situation on the final day of the season against Clermont Foot where the started the day second bottom, three points behind Metz with a seven worse goal difference. Lorient held the advantage when it came to goals scored, but head-to-head results take precedence in Ligue 1 which both sides shared with one win each and three goals apiece. That forced the sixth classification rule of head-to-head goals scored away from home, of which Metz had the advantage. It meant Le Bris’ team needed to beat Clermont and see an eight-goal swing to retain their top-flight status.
To do that, Le Bris clearly instructed his team to press high and take the game to an already relegated Clermont, something which finally told seven minutes before half-time when Lorient’s high line, as shown below, resulted in a misplaced pass from goalkeeper Mory Diaw to Ponceau who delivered a first time pass into Abergel to score from distance.
Lorient doubled their lead before half time as Le Bris’ side would go on to record the club's highest ever Ligue 1 win with a 5-0 success – a result which, ultimately, wouldn’t be enough with Metz holding out for a 2-0 defeat to PSG as Le Bris oversaw the club’s relegation by virtue of head-to-head goals scored away from home.
“To see Lorient in Ligue 2, with the means and the efforts made in these past 18-24 months, is a monumental failure and as president, I take responsibility,” said Féry after relegation was confirmed and the writing all but on the wall for Le Bris.
In a recent interview with BBC Tyne and Wear, French football correspondent and editor of AFP sport, Andy Scott, described Lorient’s season as ‘a shambles’ given what was expected following Le Bris’ first season in charge.
“He was given more power on the recruitment side but the signings did not work out,” said Scott. “There’s clearly a difference between coaches who are good at working with players on a training ground and they might not be so good at picking a player in the transfer market.
“He never got them playing at all last season. It was a shambles for a club not expected to be down where they were.”
But despite a turbulent season, Le Bris’ philosophy remained on show, even under difficult circumstances.
Take the penultimate game of the season, a defeat at Marseilles, for example. At this stage of the season, Lorient’s need for points overruled any other scenario, but Le Bris’ players still carried out that patient approach from defence.
The image below shows Amir Murillo attempting to thread a ball from the wing into Marseilles forward Faris Moumbagna – a pass which is intercepted by Laporte.
But instead of clearing the ball away at the first time of asking under pressure, Laporte plays a first time pass back towards the source where Aiyegun Tosin is positioned.
Tosin receives possession and is immediately under pressure from Murillo but, again, he looks to play out as opposed to clearing, with Benjamin Mendy providing an overlap to try and spring a counter-attack.
The week previous, Lorient travelled to Lens where they suffered a 2-0 defeat. But this game gave a clear indication of Le Bris’ set-up from a structural point of view with a distinguished back three, as can be seen below.
It shows Laporte in possession as well as the dynamic in central midfield between Innocent and Abergel where one is expected to roam while the other sits in position which allows the two No.10s to be able to vary in terms of staying tight alongside the central striker, or drop into the space in midfield.
This 3-4-2-1 set-up from Le Bris also highlights just how integral the wide players or wing-backs are to this system. The image below shows both Mendy on the left, and Panos Katseris on the right and how wide they are in stretching the pitch.
This is something which you could expect to see from the likes of Cirkin and Trai Hume for Sunderland which, in turn, may allow Jack Clarke a free role inside from the left like we saw from Le Fée and Faivre during Le Bris’ success with this system in his first season in charge.
Given the model at the Stadium of Light, and the desire of Louis-Dreyfus and Speakman to develop young players and increase their value before enjoying success or selling them on, Le Bris ticks a number of boxes owing to his achievements as an academy manager throughout large parts of his career.
His brief experience of senior management has been mixed, where when given greater flexibility in terms of transfers and more overall managerial focus, things failed to work out. At Sunderland, however, that won’t be a factor given the set-up at the Stadium of Light when it comes to recruitment and other aspects of the club. Instead, Le Bris’ focus will be to develop the players at his disposal and improve the club’s playing identity – something which he enjoyed success with initially at Lorient.
“He’s done very good in that regard of developing young players,” said Scott.
“There’s always a context within a club and he’s a very highly regarded coach and not everything that’s happened over the last six to 12 months should cloud what’s come before.
“[He’s] a training ground coach first and foremost, and spent the best part of two decades working with young players and building up academies. There’s lots there to suggest if you put the right structures around him, if you have the right possibilities for recruitment, he could be the guy to bring through players and develop the team and turn them into an exciting team in a very competitive league.
“There’s never any guarantees of success, and it’s always going to be a gamble to some extent, but he is somebody with a very interesting profile and somebody who has a good chance of success.”
Sunderland’s gamble has been long in the tooth given the four-month search process, but at last the club now feel as though they have a coach who aligns more with their philosophy as to how they see this particular version of Sunderland being. The rest will be up to Le Bris.
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