Sunderland made the perfect return to the Premier League after an absence of more than eight years as they crushed Graham Potter’s Hammers side 3-0 on Wearside.
Eliezer Mayenda opened the scoring with a perfectly-directed header, Dan Ballard doubled the Black Cats’ advantage with a thumping header of his own and Wilson Isidor completed the scoring with an angled strike in stoppage time.
Le Bris’ tactics came up trumps, with Sunderland’s new-look midfield trio excelling, but the Black Cats boss admitted his players also fed off the enthusiasm of a sold-out Stadium of Light as the feelgood factor created by last season’s play-off success carried over into the new campaign.
“We needed both sides of the performance,” said Le Bris. “We have spoken a lot about tactics, but it is obvious that we needed to show desire, intensity. They used the connection with the fans as well.
“I’m happy for the fans and the players and the club. We had different phases of pre-season and we spoke about the layers we needed to add. It was obvious that it starts from the foundations – we showed that the team is working well, they were hard to beat in a mid to low block.
“The first half was a bit more difficult but during the second half we felt we could get opportunities through regains in the middle and that we could score through counter-attacks.”
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While Sunderland started brightly, West Ham enjoyed their best spell of the game at the end of the first half. However, the Black Cats were the dominant force by far in the second period, scoring all three of their goals after the break.
“We didn’t change many important things at half-time,” said Le Bris. “We spoke a bit about their goalkeeper restarts and our high press, we went for man for man and they found two or three opportunities with long balls.
“So, it was really important to be strong in duels. We made just two or three little decisions, and it made a difference.”
The only negative from a Sunderland point of view was the injury at the start of the second half that forced Jenson Seelt to leave the field of play.
The Dutchman missed almost all of last season after undergoing ACL surgery, but Le Bris is confident he has not suffered a recurrence of the knee problem.
“I don’t think it’s [Seelt’s injury] really serious,” said Le Bris. “He played well the first part of the game. Omar (Alderete) came in and showed us we now have a bit more depth with our centre-backs, so that is a positive for us.”
