00:01Sunderland are on track for a magical season. Normally, when promoted teams enter the Premier
00:07League, they are expected to head straight back down to the Championship, but an excellent summer
00:13of recruitment, including star and captain Granit Xhaka, has meant that Sunderland have stayed
00:20clear. At the start of the season, it looked as if Sunderland may be in the race for European
00:26football. They were in the race for a top four finish up until around Christmas. However,
00:31since the turn of the year, results have started to fade, and there have even been rumours of an
00:36exit for manager Reggie Labrie, who was the architect of Sunderland's success in the Championship
00:42and again this year. One of Sunderland's stars this year has been Enzo Le Fay. Now, he's predominantly
00:50played out wide, but due to injuries, Reggie Labrie has hinted that Le Fay could make a move
00:57centrally. Here's what the manager said at a recent press conference.
01:03Yeah, for me, we are in the same position as the first game of the season. We want to play
01:09every game with the best 11, the best 16, 20 players available for the team sheet, and this
01:19is my mindset. It doesn't change after the 40-point target, now 46, and we never know what will
01:29happen at the end of the season, so it's the idea.
01:35We are working hard, but the league is evolving, so I don't know if we dropped our standards
01:42or if the opponent found new solutions to hurt our defence. Probably both, I would say. We
01:56know that it's not easy because it's about small numbers and it's not like a build-up, you know,
02:03that you will have 25-30 situations in the game, in set pieces. Sometimes only one can damage
02:12your defence. But we talked about the organisation, different problems, the commitment, also to win
02:23the duel, to win the second phase, to stay organised if the delivery is with two men rather than
02:32one, and so on. So it's about culture and I hope we'll fix this problem soon.
02:38Sometimes we can feel the end of the season during training sessions, the energy. They
02:44might be exhausted at a long season, especially the first one in the Premier League, and we
02:48still have a really young squad, but I don't think it's the case. So I hope we'll have a
02:55strong reaction soon.
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