REGIS Le Bris expects to have Pierre Ekwah, Nectar Triantis and Abdoullah Ba all back available and in contention before the start of the Championship season.

But Sunderland's head coach is relaxed about the ongoing search to add to his backroom team this summer.

Sunderland head back to the UK today after a productive week in Spain, which came to an end with a 2-1 win over CD Eldense on Sunday night. That followed a 1-1 draw with Premier League side Nottingham Forest.

Ekwah hurt his back in a challenge during that Forest game and missed the second friendly over the weekend, while Triantis and Ba haven't yet featured in pre-season as they nurse their own injuries.

But Le Bris expects all three players to soon be back in action.

"It won't be too long for any of those three guys," said the head coach, whose Sunderland side will now have a week on the training pitches at the Academy of Light before Saturday's trip to Blackpool.

"I think they will be available next week."

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Le Bris arrived on his own when he was appointed head coach, with Sunderland then starting the process of interviewing candidates to join the Frenchman's backroom team.

The 48-year-old will have the final say on who joins him, and has previously stressed the importance of making the "best" appointment rather than a quick one, revealing at his unveiling that he quickly identified the need for any newcomer to be strong at set-pieces and individual development.

Le Bris said: "There's no update at the moment, we're still working on it. I think we'll see next week or maybe a little bit later."

Sunderland travelled home on the back of a win after substitute Hemir's stunning late strike secured a 2-1 victory over Eldense on Sunday evening. Tommy Watson had put the Black Cats in front in the first half before Le Bris' side were pegged back by the Spanish second tier outfit.

"We are at the beginning of the season so this game was unpredictable because the culture of the team is still building," said Le Bris.

"We had good moments but also we struggled. We need to improve our relationship. It will help us to build in the next week to improve our team."

While pleased to win, results weren't the priority for Le Bris in Spain, with the head coach instead focusing on the time on the training pitches with his players as the Championship season approaches.

He said: "We had many opportunities to share our ideas, to focus with many training sessions. For the first game against Nottingham it was interesting, the second the team was different so it was more difficult. But at the end I'm happy because we worked well. Now we have two weeks to go further in our ideas.

"The players have trained well. It was a chance to push ourselves to improve our physical level. Then the model and tactical ideas we want to build, we rose many steps in this camp. Now it's not enough because we know the Championship is tough and we have three weeks to build the next layer.

"We have more games coming up and more opportunities to improve our team."