Last season, all three promoted sides in the Premier League were relegated. The season before that, all three promoted sides were relegated. The fear was that the gulf between the Premier League and Championship had become too big, with the increasing stratification of the English game essentially making it impossible for the promoted sides to survive, much less to thrive. It’s a self-perpetuating issue; the longer the other 17 remain in the Premier League, fattened on television rights, the harder it will be for teams coming up to make an impression.
There was a need for the promoted sides to put up a better fight than they managed last season when, between them, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton collected just 59 points. Nine games into this season, not quite a quarter of the way through, Sunderland, Leeds and Burnley already have 38 points between them. None of the three are currently in the relegation zone. But most striking have been the performances of Sunderland, who have taken 17 points already and, to widespread surprise, lie fourth in the table.
Their fixture list, it should be said, has been kind. Looking at the table on Saturday morning, Sunderland had faced only one side in the top half. Starting with a home game against West Ham was about as gentle as introductions come. They faced Nottingham Forest when they were locked in the strange Ange Postecoglou slump, and Aston Villa when they were still in their early-season funk. They’ve also beaten Brentford and Wolves at home.
Defeat at Manchester United before the international break suggested they might struggle against better opponents, which was why Saturday’s game at Chelsea was so important. Could they win away? Could they challenge the elite? Was their positive start an illusion created by the fixture list? As they went 1-0 down inside four minutes, the signs were not good. But they battled back, equalized midway through the half and won it with a classic counterattack in injury-time. A smash-and-grab? Not really: Sunderland had the better xG.
Against Villa when the left-back Reinildo was sent off and against United having gone 2-0 down, Sunderland had switched to three at the back. At Stamford Bridge, manager Régis Le Bris started with a 5-4-1, despite the injury to centre-back Omar Alderete, who has been perhaps their greatest triumph of recruitment, a tough but classy ball-playing centre-back discovered at Getafe. That meant Dan Ballard in the middle with Nordi Mukiele to his right (it’s frankly inexplicable that a central defender of such quality joined Sunderland from Paris Saint-Germain for just £9.5m ($12.6m) plus £2.5m ($3.3m) in potential add-ons) and the on-loan Lutsharel Geertruida to his left. Geertruida was a full-back in Arne Slot’s title-winning Feyenoord side in the Netherlands, and until Saturday had played in midfield for Sunderland.
Having two players so comfortable on the ball in the back three allowed them to step up and form an extra man in midfield where necessary. The shape was 5-4-1, which Chelsea found extremely hard to break down, but it wasn’t a passive system. Rather, when Sunderland chose to press they did so with ferocious conviction, inspired by Noah Sadiki, whose remarkable stamina has drawn comparison with N’Golo Kanté. In a young side, midfielder Granit Xhaka has emerged as a real leader, a player of quality and incisiveness but also steel.
Sunderland have benefited, clearly, from spending £160m ($213m) on 13 permanent signings in the summer, although they also raised £45m ($60m) in sales, most notably Jobe Bellingham to Borussia Dortmund. But they have spent wisely. Last season, as he oversaw the second part of Southampton’s slide back into the Championship, Ivan Jurić observed that he had expected his players to be inferior technically and tactically, but he had been taken aback by how they had been physically overwhelmed. Sunderland seem to have been very aware of the potential issue, signing only notably powerful players.
But that’s not to suggest they are only a physical side. Their preference, as it was in most of their better performances last season, is to sit deep, absorb pressure and play on the break. There is a clear plan and it says much for both the recruitment and Le Bris’s coaching that there has been so little apparent disruption despite the arrival of the wave of new signings.
It’s extremely unlikely that Sunderland will remain fourth. Their fixture list in the second half of the first half of the season is much harder than in the first, they will lose perhaps as seven players to the Africa Cup of Nations and there probably will be some sort of regression to the mean. Realistically, though, they are probably only six wins from safety and that was always the primary goal – one that, even amid the euphoria of the playoff final win over Sheffield United in May, few fans seemed to believe possible.
That’s not just good for Sunderland, but also for English football. After two seasons in which the promoted sides have barely even made up the numbers, reigniting the idea that a side can come up and actually have fun is vital for the pyramid.
This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.
