Le Bris was appointed during the summer months after Sunderland burned through two permanent bosses last season in Tony Mowbray and Michael Beale alongside two separate interim stints from Mike Dodds as the Black Cats finished a disappointing 16th in the Championship.
Decision-makers at Sunderland took their time over Le Bris with sporting director Kristjaan Speakman involved in the process alongside Louis-Dreyfus and fellow co-owner Juan Sartori. The Wearsiders had been tracking the Frenchman for some time after he finished 10th with Lorient in the French top tier the season prior.
Lorient were relegated the following season under Le Bris after many of their best players were sold. Since his move to England, however, Le Bris has Sunderland top of the Championship after 10 games played with wins against the likes of Burnley, Middlesbrough and Hull City.
Speaking to RMC Sport, Louis-Dreyfus was asked about Le Bris’ best characteristics: “His greatest quality? It’s very difficult to say but I think that if I talk purely about the mental aspect… one thing that excites us all within the club, even before the arrival of Régis Le Bris, which we found at home and which really encouraged us to take him, is that he is relentless as they say in English.
“It’s the idea of never stopping and always trying to progress and what we saw in him is that he sees the development of a team and a club as something that never stops. He is always looking at how to improve things at all levels and in all aspects.
“That is also, in terms of mentality, the thing that we were trying to do as a club. One thing that really connects us is this passion for progress, to try to improve as a club both individually and collectively.”
Sunderland have seen friction with their head coaches at times under the ownership of Louis-Dreyfus with both Tony Mowbray and Alex Neil before him expressing frustration at times with the billionaire’s “model” at the club, which is enacted by Speakman and head of recruitment Stuart Harvey. Le Bris, though, appears to be fully aligned with his employers.
“If I give for example a quality that is really striking in him, it is his work methodology and in particular on the development of a team collectively and individually,” he said. “I think that there are a lot of coaches today who like to do a lot of different things in clubs. We have coaches who want to do recruitment, others who want to do other things. But him, I think that where he feels most comfortable is on a field coaching the team.
“We think that is where he really has extraordinary qualities. With the level of detail in his analyses and in his daily work with the players.”
Louis-Dreyfus added on Le Bris’ early success as Sunderland’s head coach this season: “I think the thing he really succeeded in doing was showing a lot of curiosity about the club, about the people at the club, about the supporters, about the history of the club.
“He learned and understood very, very quickly what type of club it is, how to work there, and who the people are around. He really, with very impressive speed, was able to understand the context in which he arrived and how to manage it.
“Four to six weeks after his arrival, he already had a very clear idea of what he had to do and the context of the club. From my point of view, this is one of the things that allowed him to make this good start to the championship. It is linked to his capacity and his curiosity to understand at such speed a championship, a team, players, and a completely new staff.”
Sunderland have made a tremendous start to the season in the Championship. Indeed, the club’s points tally of 22 from 10 games is the Black Cats’ joint-best start in the club’s entire history in the second tier, equalling the achievements of the 1975-76 team, who ended up winning promotion at the end of that campaign.
“It’s really too early to say where the team will be at the end of the season,” Louis-Dreyfus said about his expectations for the current campaign. “In the championship seasons I’ve been involved in, I’ve seen a team that was last in November get promoted and I’ve seen teams that were first or second in February finish in seventeenth place. It’s a championship that’s so long that it’s hard to say.”
