Régis Le Bris delivers honest and insightful verdict on Sunderland's progress - and where they must improve

Régis Le Bris admits his Sunderland side are still very much a work in a progress after their narrow win over Blackpool on Saturday.

Jack Clarke’s late winner secured a win for the Black Cats in a game that they dominated in terms of possession and territory. Though there were some good signs in the game, they didn’t carve out regular chances against Blackpool’s defence and the head coach admits that he still has a lot of work to do when it comes to the team breaking down deep-lying defences. That has been a key issue for Sunderland in recent times and Le Bris is well aware that it will be the case again in the upcoming campaign - especially at the Stadium of Light.

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

“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 to build the ability to adjust the little details, because that really makes the difference. We are now at that stage.”

Le Bris was encouraged by Clarke’s winner, which was a direct result of Dan Neil pinching the ball back in midfield. The new head coach sees pressing as a key weapon his side can add to their armoury.

"It was a hard game because it was difficult to unbalance this back five, they were a very compact defence,” he said.

“We struggled a bit against this kind of defence and then they changed almost all the team for the second half, which gives them a lot of energy to run and close the spaces. 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 10,15, 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. We spoke at half time about playing quicker, we wanted a higher tempo and also to give speed to our full backs because it was a little bit slow, allowing their defence to close the spaces."

Attention now turns to Sunderland’s friendly at Bradford City on Tuesday night, when Le Bris will rotate his side heavily. Ian Poveda could make his debut after not featuring here, while Abdoullah Ba should make his first appearance of pre-season.