Regis Le Bris hails ‘crucial’ victory as Sunderland end winless run

Regis Le Bris hailed Sunderland’s victory over Chelsea as “crucial” after his side ground out a 1-0 win to move off the bottom of the Premier League.

The hosts went into Sunday’s clash at the Stadium of Light on a poor run of form, without a league win since August’s triumph over Fulham.

Although they have performed better in the cup competitions, a 2-0 defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Europa League on Thursday added to the growing concerns.

However, Enzo Le Fee’s 36th-minute spot-kick earned Sunderland a much-needed victory and Le Bris was full of praise for the performance.

He said: “The three points were crucial at the end of this nine-game block before the international break as well.

“We embodied the identity, the intensity, the togetherness. The way that we managed the game according to the strength, the scenario, I think was good.”

The win lifted Sunderland off the foot of the table, although they remain in the relegation zone, and Le Bris revealed his team have “felt the danger”.

Asked if had had seen the return of a Sunderland performance typical of last season, Le Bris replied: “I would like to say yes it’s the case, but sometimes two things.

“The first is the journey, it’s really demanding, we need to adapt. The second, I think the lads felt the danger as well.

“It’s important to take this into account. It’s important to do (it) now because if it’s later it will be too late.

“It’s not done, I told them the target is still 40 points so a long way to go. But the reaction and what we showed as a group and individual performances as well were really important.”

The only sour note for Sunderland was an injury to captain Granit Xhaka, who was forced off after only four minutes with what Le Bris said looks like a calf problem.

Xabi Alonso said Chelsea “didn’t produce enough” as they slipped to their fourth league defeat of the campaign.

He said: “I think we didn’t deserve more than probably one point, the game was really close.

“We didn’t produce enough to deserve to win.

“We were against the low block, we missed a bit of patience, a bit of quality, creativity in the last third to create more chances.

“We need to be more consistent to move the ball from one side to the other, we didn’t do good enough.”

Alonso also expressed his frustration at Chelsea’s defending in the build-up to the penalty, where a tussle between Levi Colwill and Brian Brobbey resulted in the striker being brought down in the area and a spot-kick awarded.

Chelsea had a penalty shout earlier in the match when Cole Palmer was bundled over, but a VAR check deemed that contact happened outside the box.

Speaking about both incidents, Alonso said: “I haven’t seen Cole’s one, but I’ve been told that there was a chance that it would be a fair penalty and it could have been given.

“The other one, not happy with how we defended that situation, something that we could avoid. From that action to give a penalty is not good from us.”