https://www.a-love-supreme.com/post/rlb-ready-for-prem (some of the interview was already in the match day thread) please log in to view this image Over the weekend Regis Le Bris did a series of interviews with Italian news outlets where he spoke about Sunderland's amazing promotion season, how he's feeling ahead of his first Premier League campaign and what it'll be like to come up against the likes of Pep Guardiola and Arne Slot... FAN CONNECTION "Sunderland is a giant of English football that has fallen and is now resurrecting. The thing that impressed me most about the series is the attachment to the team by the fans. These are people who live for Sunderland: they have an incredible passion for this club. The first time I met them was in front of the official club shop, when the new shirt came out. There was a 100-meter queue, with people waiting there since the morning to buy the shirt. They didn't know me, I was almost a stranger. The fans welcomed me super well, from day one. During the pre-season camp in Spain, 2,500 of them came to watch a friendly. Incredible. For the play-off final at Wembley, 35,000 of our tickets were snapped up while Sheffield's didn't manage to sell them all." AGAINST THE ODDS "Opta gave us less than a 5% chance of finishing in the top 6 and a 25% chance of being relegated back to League One. We managed to overturn the predictions with the work on the pitch and with the strength of an extraordinary group, which used the common energy to obtain great results." FEARLESS "We are talking about the NBA of football, but it is an exciting challenge and we like challenges. I am not scared, I remain convinced that it must be a collective effort: we want to build a strong team, a strong staff, a strong structure. Maintaining our values, I think, is what will allow us to be successful." WEMBLEY CELEBRATIONS "There were 35,000 Sunderland fans celebrating and going wild. It was magical. At the end of the game, the journalists were looking for me for interviews. I stopped them. I said: 'Just give me two minutes. Let me spend a moment with these fans.' Incredible. It took a while to realise it, but yes: we are in the Premier League." MAN CITY & LIVERPOOL "The way I am, I don’t worry too much about the future or the consequences: I always take it one day at a time, trying to understand how I can improve the team at this precise moment. I think about one minute at a time, and it will be the same when we have to face Liverpool. What were the chances of Sunderland being promoted to the Premier League? It is clear that we will have to overturn some predictions, but we will try with our identity and our community." PROMOTION ALWAYS THE AIM "At the first meeting, I asked the lads what, in their opinion, had brought them to be there, at that moment, at the pre-season camp. Everyone responded by talking about the common desire to go to the Premier League. These are words that you hear often, but in this case the words were combined with facts, sacrifice, the desire to really get there, all together. There was an incredible alchemy right from the start. There were important players from whom I asked a sacrifice, to whom I sometimes said that they would not start: no one ever complained, everyone put themselves at the service of the team." TIL THE END "I worked with a group of young guys: our team had the lowest average age of the whole Championship, and yet we managed to work hard, in an incredibly mature way, being supportive and above all arriving fresh at the end of the season. It is no coincidence that in the play-off semi-final against Coventry we scored the decisive goal in the final minutes, and it is no coincidence that we won the final at Wembley in the 95th minute."
