Sunderland Players With Biggest Points To Prove After International Break

Sunderland headed into the international break with a renewed sense of optimism after their 1-0 win over Chelsea, which can hopefully be the much-needed turning point to set their shocking start to the Premier League season on a better course.

Sunderland beat Xabi Alonso's side courtesy of an Enzo Le Fée penalty, with Regis Le Bris' side seeing out the victory with a display exhibiting the grit and unity that the Black Cats became known for under the Frenchman last season.

However, it is imperative for the Sunderland boss when reflecting on the early stages of the campaign during the international break to remeber the run of shocking performances that came before the Chelsea victory, that simply cannot be repeated.

Shocking defensive displays, namely against the likes of Bournemouth and Coventry City, uninspired midfield outings and toothless attacking performances, has forced Le Bris to rotate his Sunderland starting XI heavily throughout the early stages in his attempt to wrestle back some standards.

Following the break, Sunderland head to Aston Villa before hosting Polish outfit Jagiellonia Białystok in the Europa League and Tottenham in the top flight to round off their November fixture list.

Within those games, and beyond, three Sunderland players in particular have major points to prove to Le Bris and the Stadium of Light faithful.

One of the Sunderland players who has struggled the most in the first stage of the season has been centre-back Omar Alderete, who looks like a shell of his former assured self from last term.

The former Getafe defender has made a catalogue of individual defensive errors this season, namely with his Sunday League-level performance in the abject 2-0 defeat at Bournemouth and his petulant injury-time red card at Coventry which brought an end to another subpar performance from the Paraguyuan.

Perhaps Alderete is still struggling with the injury issues that came for him during the World Cup and, as a result, impacted his Sunderland pre-season, which has led to his many errors directly seeing the Black Cats drop much-needed points.

Therefore, the experienced central defender will need to make a rapid improvement in his performances following the break to regain the dwindling faith of the Black Cats boss.

Alongside Alderete in defence, summer signing Kevin Danso has been in terrible form for Sunderland over recent weeks, despite the Spurs loanee initially looking like a stellar signing before the Black Cats' barren run.

Again unfortunately referring to the Bournemouth horrow show, Danso was dismissed after just 16 minutes after an embarassing showing between himself and Alderete, and the Austrian international was also largely at fault for Dinamo Zagreb's second goal in Europa League loss pre-Chelsea.

With Danso dropped for the Chelsea clash, in which Nordi Mukiele and Luke O'Nien partnered in central defence to earn Sunderland's third Premier League clean sheet of the season, the 28-year-old will have a difficult task to displace the aforementioned duo following the break and resurrect his Black Cats career.

Another Sunderland player who has struggled to make a positive impact at the start of the season has been £30.8m summer signing from Lyon Malick Fofana, who is yet to show why the Black Cats shelled out a large portion of their transfer window budget on his signature.

Fofana has netted just once for Sunderland this season, with his back-post header in the 3-2 Carabao Cup win over Brentford, and has failed to notch a goal contribution thus far in his five Premier League appearances.

However, unlike the experienced defensive duo, there is mitigation with Fofana, given that the 21-year-old is acclimatising to a new, more physical league in comparison to Ligue 1, and has also not been given a consistent run of Premier League outings by Le Bris yet.

After the international break, with Chemsdine Talbi impressing from the start against Chelsea at left-wing, the pressure is on Fofana to prove why Sunderland went to great lengths to secure his services at the behest of Crystal Palace this summer and start producing in the Premier League to secure his spot under Le Bris.