Sunderland arrived in the Premier League perhaps earlier than expected but nevertheless with a clear plan. Iain Macintosh assesses the early indications of how that plan is working out.
No matter how many seasons of football people watch, they frequently forget how very long they last. This weekend, a narrative developed suggesting that an Arsenal victory over Manchester City would end Pep Guardiola’s title challenge. It’s September. Nothing ends in September.
And yet, at the risk of adding myself to the swell of premature adjudicators, I have seen enough from Sunderland already to convince me that they are not going to be relegated. And if you’d have asked me in July who I thought was going down, I’d have shouted SUNDERLAND! before you’d even finished your question.
I thought they were lucky to go up. They were lucky to beat Sheffield United in the play-off final and they were even luckier to beat Coventry in the play-off semi-final. I thought the progress they had made was impressive, to even be in the play-offs after losing 22 games the previous season was no small feat. But their promotion owed more to good fortune than good football.
They have capitalised on that fortune. They may only have picked up a point at home to Aston Villa, but they fought for it with ten men for the majority of the game and they surely would have won had their left-back Reinildo not tried to cleave off Matty Cash’s testicles with his studs midway through the first half.
They are surprisingly positive for a newly promoted team. Instead of sitting back and hoping to nick something, manager Regis Le Bris has got his players on the front foot, always looking to attack and playing with so much more cohesion than you would expect for such a hastily assembled squad. The full-backs are encouraged to get forward, the centre-backs go to the halfway line, there were times away at Crystal Palace the previous week when Sunderland had all ten outfield players in the opposition half. They move with pace and intent and no small amount of courage.
Sunderland shopped extensively in the summer, they could not be accused of a lack of ambition, but they’ve done this before and succeeded only in making everything worse. Former director of football Roberto di Fanti bought 14 players in the summer of 2013 and while one or two were okay (stand up, Emanuele Giaccherini), most were absolutely woeful and the club never quite recovered. Impartial observers can be forgiven for fearing such a thing had happened again. Those fears were misplaced.
Clubs who have gave the most minutes to players aged 21 and under in the current 2025/26 Premier League campaign.
Sunderland – 1,228
Brighton – 1,008
Brentford – 743
Chelsea – 700
Man United – 670
West Ham – 577
Man City – 506 pic.twitter.com/CtfcOYARER— Youth Academies (@youthacademies) September 15, 2025
Goalkeeper Robin Roefs, his misjudgement for Villa’s goal aside, looks assured and confident, particularly when dealing with looping crosses. He’s just 22, he’ll make more mistakes along the way, but he has made an extremely promising start and if he can shrug off this moment and move on, he’ll be absolutely fine.
Paraguayan defender Omar Alderete looks like he’s been playing in the Premier League for years. His partner, Nordi Mukiele, is a class act too, even if you can already see some of the lapses that presumably caused Paris St Germain to let him go. Palace should have scored when a Sunderland attack broke down and Mukiele, approaching the halfway line in support, didn’t react anywhere near quickly enough, allowing a huge gap to open up behind him for Yeremy Pino. Sunderland got away with one there. But just as with Roefs, he will prevent far more opportunities than he’ll concede. There are no concerns here.
Granit Xhaka’s arrival raised some eyebrows. He’ll be 33 next week and a big money three year deal remains a risk. But for now, he looks impeccable on the ball and his experience in such a young squad will be invaluable. The deftness of his header against Villa, the way he held his nerve and delivered the perfect ball to Wilson Isidor, that money looks well spent.
Isidor is an interesting one. He is, of course, not a new arrival, he came to the club last season, scoring a modest 12 Championship goals in 43 appearances. Three goals in his first five Premier League games is a very good start, but I haven’t been quite as convinced by him.
Noah Sadiki, on the other hand, looks perfectly suited to this level. What he lacks in height (he’s 5ft8) he makes up for in energy and a rounded skill set that allows him to provide support in all areas of the pitch. He’s smart enough to know when to cover the hole that Reinildo leaves behind him, he’s technically adept enough to keep moves moving with quick passes and he’s still only 20 years old. If he maintains this level of application, he could really kick on.
Granit Xhaka and Wilson Isidor combine once again 🔥 pic.twitter.com/FdC1KxRh2E
— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) September 21, 2025
I covered Sunderland a lot during their last spell in the Premier League. The best I ever saw of them was midway through Steve Bruce’s tenure when he had Darren Bent and Asamoah Gyan firing on all cylinders during the 2010/11 season. Sunderland were sixth at the end of January before a run of nine games without a win saw them plummet down the table.
Bruce was gone before the next Christmas and Sunderland embarked on a mad run of short term fixes, passing saviours and false prophets before getting relegated so hard in 2017 that they crashed straight through the Championship and into League One in a single season.
So when I say that this is the best Sunderland side I have seen in the 21st century, I say it with the caveat that the bar is extremely low. But this is the best Sunderland side I have seen in the 21st century and I don’t think they’re going be relegated.
Relegated teams are frequently teams that just aren’t good enough for this level, but eight points already, nearly a quarter of what is required for survival, suggests that Sunderland are okay up here. Sometimes they are broken teams bereft of confidence and vision, like West Ham, and Sunderland definitely aren’t that. They can often be teams like Wolves who have just sold their best player one too many times. Sunderland might well become that, but not yet.
There’s a long way to go, of course. No-one’s title challenge ends in September and very few can deem themselves safe by that point either (though I think Liverpool will probably be ok). But this is not a Sunderland side to be taken lightly. They’ll be just fine.
I’m a Newcastle fan, but I grew up in South Tyneside and half my mates are Sunderland fans, so I’ve never had that rabid hatred of them – as far as I’m concerned, we’ve far more in common than not – and I’m pleased for my friends that they’ve started well. (Albeit with the caveat that I hope they finish below us in all things, of course!)
Anyhoo, the real reason for my comment is that it’s nice to see content that isn’t purely focused on the “Big Six” – headline articles on the likes of Sunderland, West Ham and Everton are far more interesting to me, and hopefully others.
How great it was to read this and see, in black and white, praise for Regis Le Bris. Finally! I’m not a Sunderland supporter, but I am a football fan, and I did wonder what research commentators had actually done when they were predicting Sunderland would go straight back down. They might of course, but with Le Bris giving his players the confidence and belief to go for it, and some wise additions to the team, it was never as certain as many were predicting.