Regis Le Bris was delighted to see his Sunderland side round off a successful week with a dominant 2-0 win over Oxford.
The Black Cats made it three wins in the space of six days as they followed up away wins at Hull and Luton with an impressive showing at the Stadium of Light.
Goals from Jobe Bellingham and Wilson Isidor took Sunderland five points clear at the top of the Sky Bet Championship table, and while Le Bris will not be getting carried away just yet, he is justifiably delighted at the way in which his team is developing.
Le Bris said: “It has been a tough week, and it wasn’t easy to manage this game because it was the third one in six days.
“I think we had good control of the game, especially during the first half, and we could have scored one or two more goals to be more comfortable in the second half.
“But we also needed to stay consistent right to the end, and I think the way we played is good for the progress of the team. I am happy because the players did well in terms of the way they managed the game to win. I think we deserved to win the game.”
Le Bris was especially pleased with his players’ willingness to break into the Oxford box, as typified by Bellingham’s run before he headed home Trai Hume’s cross.
The Sunderland boss said: “The final third can be difficult to break. When you build a new game model and culture for a team, the final layer in the game is the hardest to build.
“It’s not perfect, but Jobe’s goal was very interesting because we want to get into the box like that, to receive that kind of cross. The timing was perfect, and this layer of progression in our game model is now in progress.”
Oxford have made a decent start to the season following their promotion from League One last term, but manager Des Buckingham admitted Sunderland had provided his players with their toughest test of the campaign so far.
Buckingham said: “The result is a loss, but I think we’ve come up against a very good Sunderland side. They’re clearly in good form. They’re at the top of the table, and I think they’ve shown the quality that this league does have.
“We’ve got off to a good start ourselves, and I’d say this is the first away game where we’ve come and we’ve had a team be on top of the game as much as they were. They stopped us from being able to do what we wanted to do.
“We never really settled in at any moment to be comfortable to be able to play. But Sunderland didn’t give us the time to do it anyway. It’s in those moments where you have to brave to still play, but it’s about being able to do that at the speed that is required. We’re quickly finding that, at this level, the physical demands of the league are higher to what we’ve faced (in League One).”
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