RLB POST BURNLEY

Regis Le Bris praised Habib Diarra who was so influential in just his fourth start for Sunderland, and explained the changes that were made following last week's loss at West Ham. Plus, he explained a little bit about our new signing, Nilson Angulo.

ANGULO IS EXCITING

“I know him because we have worked with the recruitment structure on his profile. I think he is a strong, powerful tall winger with strong physical ability. He has this South American style of play as well, with the ability to be creative. He likes the one-v-one situations, he has this character. After that, he will probably need time to connect with his team-mates and the league, but you never know, sometimes it is really quick, sometimes it takes time. But we are really happy to have him.”

GEERTRUIDA SITUATION

“We’ve had many conversations. I think we were honest and really well connected all the way through. When the deadline was finished and over, he accepted the decision. I think he is ready to play for Sunderland. I don’t have any worries about him being okay from now on.”

DIARRA IS BACK

“It's a new signing for us. We spoke together this week about a new start. We supported him through his injury, then through AFCON and we were absolutely convinced that when he comes back with us, he will have the quality as a player, but he's really competitive as well. He wants to win, he wants to press, he wants to score and he gives us this energy, which is really important in this league. He was one of our first signings, so he set the tone for us when we decided to go with him and he agreed, obviously. He came late in the squad, but now I hope he will continue this kind of performances.”

BROBBEY

“Brian is getting better. I think game after game you can see how strong he is in this part of the pitch. I think his teammates now want to play with him, want to feed him. When we get pressed man for man, for example, we still have this option to go long, then we can support and we can break the press. So it was really important today. He could have scored, maybe once or twice, but he worked really hard.”

BOUNCE BACK FROM WHU

“It was important to react, to show once again the way we want to play, the ability to press high, to be aggressive, to regain possession. It was important to threaten the space in behind as well and I think we did really well. Today we created chances, we scored three goals, might have been maybe one or two more, so happy with the response, yeah."

TWEAKING TACTICS

“Sometimes it's connected with tactical problems. So we spoke a lot this week about the way we defended in the mid-block and I think we were probably a bit too reserved and we tried to change it during the week, to be more aggressive in every phase. And it worked well today, even if sometimes Burnley had the ball. We were not passive, we tried to find the right trigger, to press and when it was possible to jump, we did it. So it gives us energy, power, intensity in every phase.”