RLB POST YORK

Regis Le Bris reflected on Sunderland's 5-1 win against York City, which saw a different 11 in each half as we kicked off pre-season.

POSITIVE START TO PRE-SEASON

“It was important to start the season with two different halves, 45 minutes for each team. The team spirit was good, obviously the score is the score, and we have to move on.”

TEAM BONDING

“They are in a good place. New season, happy to be together again and so far they’ve worked hard. It’s a good signal for the next stage.”

SECOND HALF

“We changed the full squad and for them it’s really positive to experience different situations. They’ve been in the training sessions and today they got 45 minutes. It was a different output but I think they worked hard together with the deep block and finally they scored the one goal.”

PRE-SEASON AIMS

“I think the first part is to link the training sessions and we want to build the fitness levels, and also to re-introduce our principles. You need different experiences and to be fair, York played good football. I think it was interesting for our defensive setup. After that, we’ll go across different situations against other teams.”

ONTO THE USA

“The first step was really positive today and now we’ll face stronger opponents. We need to build the dynamic and they will probably be in the same workflow as us, with different players coming into the team a bit later. It’s going to be interesting.”

A WORD FOR THE FANS

“It’s always really positive to play locally because we want to be connected with our fans. Today was like the first step for the new season and they were behind us again. Now for the USA they’ll have to travel further but we know they’ll be behind us."