WITH less than a week to go to the start of the new Championship season, when it comes to assessing Sunderland’s prospects, it is safe to say there are currently more questions than answers.

Was Regis Le Bris the right choice of head coach after a recruitment process that dragged on for most of the summer? Will Sunderland ever sign a new centre-forward, or will it be a case of square pegs in round holes yet again in the final third? Will Jack Clarke still be a Sunderland player when the transfer window closes at the end of the month? Or Jobe Bellingham? And will there be a hangover from the dreadful end to last season or has the slate been wiped clean under a new boss? ‘Expect the unexpected’ has been a fitting mantra for Sunderland for quite a while now, but it currently feels more relevant than ever with the new campaign about to begin.

Let’s start with Le Bris. Have Sunderland appointed the visionary head coach who emerged from the youth ranks at Lorient to guide the unfancied French club to a top-ten finish in Ligue 1 two seasons ago, attracting a managerial offer from Nice? Or have they have landed themselves with the inexperienced boss who proved incapable of keeping his side in the French top-flight last season, suffering relegation on the final day of the season?

Who knows, but having taken almost five months to come up with a permanent successor to Michael Beale, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and Kristjaan Speakman desperately need their Le Bris gamble to succeed. They made the controversial decision to dispense with the services of Tony Mowbray in the first half of last season, following it up with the disastrous choice of Beale as his successor. Effectively writing off the second half of the campaign under Mike Dodds was deemed to be worthwhile if it meant being able to appoint a top-class boss from a wider pool of candidates in the summer, but an initial pursuit of Will Still ended in a public snubbing and attention quickly turned to Le Bris.

Speakman maintains the 48-year-old Frenchman was always part of a five-man shortlist, but the messy nature of his appointment means the spotlight is even more intensely focused on Le Bris as he prepares to lead Sunderland into Championship action. His coaching abilities are not really in doubt, with a host of esteemed figures within the French game willing to vouch for him. He has also come into the head-coach role with his eyes wide open, meaning there should be no repeat of the clashes over recruitment and control that ultimately led to the departure of both Mowbray and Alex Neil. As Beale quickly discovered, though, there is more to managing Sunderland than coaching the first team. How Le Bris deals with the politics of his role and the expectation that will understandably be piled on his shoulders will go a long way towards determining his fate.

That said though, it would help if he had a striker. How long has the recruitment of a new centre-forward been Sunderland’s overriding transfer priority? At least two years, arguably more. Yet here we are, a couple of days out from the season opener against Cardiff City, and Le Bris is still trying to cobble together a forward line from the odds and ends that Mowbray, Beale and Dodds all deemed to be of insufficient quality for the Championship. Eliezer Mayenda looks like getting the nod to lead the line at the weekend, with Nazariy Rusyn as his back-up and Luis Hemir somewhere in the wilderness being touted to all and sundry as a loan option, but that is surely not the plan for the remainder of the campaign.

Eliezer Mayenda is set to lead the line for Sunderland in their season opener at Cardiff CityEliezer Mayenda is set to lead the line for Sunderland in their season opener at Cardiff City (Image: Ian Horrocks)

Maybe not, but Speakman’s assessment that Sunderland ‘do not necessarily need a new number nine’ is troubling. The pursuit of Caen’s Alexandre Mendy appears to have hit a brick wall, while talks over Troyes forward Ike Ugbo also seem to have stalled. The fact Sunderland’s recruitment team have been looking at more experienced forwards is a positive given the failure of the previous focus on youth in the final third, but until a deal is finalised, the fear of having to go through another season without a natural goalscorer will remain.

Sunderland’s transfer business in other areas of the field has been more positive, with the addition of Simon Moore, Alan Browne and Ian Poveda finally addressing the chronic lack of Championship experience that hampered previous squads. Browne looks an especially astute addition – he could well start alongside Dan Neil in central midfield at the weekend ahead of Chris Rigg – while Poveda showed what he was capable of in the second half of last season with Sheffield Wednesday.

In terms of transfers, however, the most significant thing that has happened so far this summer is the deals that have not occurred. Clarke’s future has been the subject of fevered debate for a couple of seasons now, but as things stand, the winger remains on Sunderland’s books. The same is true of Anthony Patterson, Dan Ballard, Trai Hume, Neil and Bellingham, all of whom have been attracting various degrees of interest thanks to their performances with the Black Cats.

Speakman is adamant Sunderland are under no financial pressure to sell any of their prize assets, so the hope is that they will all stay as part of the squad for the whole of the season. That might be unrealistic, particularly when it comes to Clarke, who could well be the subject of a formal offer from a top-flight club towards the end of the month, but at least the Black Cats look like avoiding the kind of wholesale squad gutting that might have been feared at the end of last season.

Jack Clarke remains a Sunderland player despite transfer interest from elsewhereJack Clarke remains a Sunderland player despite transfer interest from elsewhere (Image: Ian Horrocks)

That is significant, as while last term ended disastrously, it is important to remember how well Sunderland were performing prior to Mowbray’s exit. They made the play-offs two seasons ago, albeit with considerable assistance from Amad Diallo, and were still sitting in the top half of the table after Mowbray was dismissed last December.

Clarke and Patrick Roberts are two of the best wingers outside the Premier League, Bellingham is a hugely-exciting attacking-midfield prospect, Neil will almost certainly end up in the top-flight in the next couple of seasons, with or without Sunderland, and Ballard, once restored to full fitness, is an excellent centre-half. For all their recent failings, this remains a Sunderland squad packed with quality players.

The worry is that the disastrous end to last season will continue to have an impact in the new campaign. Can a side that won two of their final 15 matches last term suddenly flick a switch and pretend that the downturn never happened? Le Bris will be hoping so, and the failure of the experiment with Dodds meant the towel was thrown in long before the losses started racking up in the final month of the campaign.

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Nevertheless, this is a group of Sunderland players who are no longer accustomed to winning. Clearly, that has to be rectified as quickly as possible.

The start of a new season is always a key period, but the next few weeks feel especially crucial for Sunderland. Start well, and Le Bris will benefit from an immediate feelgood factor, the squad will forget about their former troubles and the mood around the club will be positive. Struggle in the first four or five games, though, and Le Bris will be on the back foot from the off, the players’ confidence will quickly hit rock bottom and the anger and frustration that was festering in the stands towards the end of last season will rapidly boil over, with fingers likely to be pointed at both Speakman and Louis-Dreyfus. Which scenario will play out? As previously stated, there are still more questions than answers at the moment. But that is about to change.