REGIS LE BRIS is ready to start trimming his Sunderland squad ahead of the start of the new Championship season.

The Black Cats continued their pre-season preparations with a 1-0 win over Blackpool yesterday, with Jack Clarke scoring the only goal of the game at Bloomfield Road.

Jay Matete, Jewison Bennette and Luis Hemir did not feature in the squad for the Blackpool game, having instead been selected in the Under-21s side that suffered a 3-0 defeat to Hartlepool United at Victoria Park.

The trio do not feature in Le Bris’ plans for the forthcoming Championship campaign, with Sunderland officials actively attempting to move them on.

“Yeah, for sure (it is time to reduce the size of the first-team group),” said Le Bris, who started with Eliezer Mayenda as his central striker against Blackpool. “It is now two weeks until we play against Cardiff City, so it is now time to reduce the group and work on the starting XI and the substitutes who will be involved at the start of the season.

“So, that's our goal at the moment, and for the other players who can't be involved for the season, it will be interesting for them to find a loan for sure.”

Timothee Pembele and Elliot Embleton were also absent at the weekend, but the pair remain part of Le Bris’ plans for next season and should be involved when Sunderland return to friendly action at Bradford City on Tuesday night.

“We have another game on Tuesday, so they will have time to play there,” said the Sunderland boss, whose side will then round off their pre-season programme by returning to Bradford to face Marseille on Saturday.

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Leo Hjelde and Pierre Ekwah are nursing minor injuries, and at this stage, it is unclear whether the pair will be able to feature in either of the two remaining warm-up games.

Aji Alese played in the first half of yesterday’s win, but was replaced by Zak Johnson for the second half after reporting a niggle, with Le Bris hoping the decision to replace the centre-half at the interval has avoided a more serious injury issue.

“Pierre is still struggling with a pain in his back, while Leo received a hit on his calf on during the training session (on Friday) so we decided not to take any risks with him," he said. “With Aji, he felt a pain in his quadriceps so again, we didn't take a risk and replaced him at half-time.”

Clarke’s second-half strike settled things against a Blackpool side that will be competing in League One next season, with Sunderland struggling to create chances against a deep-lying opposition defence.

Converting possession into goalscoring opportunities was a problem last season, and Le Bris accepts his side have to find ways of troubling opponents who are happy to sit in against them.

“We need many experiences to build our shared references so this kind of game is very interesting because it (breaking teams down) will be one of our main problems for sure, at home especially,” said Le Bris.

“The team wants to learn and that is clear during the week and the training sessions, but we need more experiences so that, with the feedback, we can build new ideas and build the ability to adjust the little details, because that really makes the difference. We are now at that stage.

“We, for sure, have some work to improve our way to imbalance this kind of defence, there was a lack of deep runs in behind. We need also to keep the ideas in defence because in these kind of games it's not always after ten,15, 20 passes you can score. It's often about a quick recovery and you can score when they are unbalanced, and this is exactly how we scored.”