Fifteen summer signings usually sounds like the beginning of a warning.
Too much change. Too many new relationships. Too little time for a manager to work out who fits where.
Sunderland did something rather different.
They formally added 15 players before the 2025/26 Premier League season, yet Régis Le Bris made only 63 starting-XI changes across the campaign — joint-fewest in the division. Premier League Premier League
That is the contradiction at the heart of Sunderland’s remarkable return to the Premier League.
The club created enormous squad churn, but remarkably little first-team churn.
Summer transactions supplied 74.2% of Sunderland’s league starts and 72.9% of their available player-minutes, yet Le Bris quickly concentrated responsibility in a relatively small group and then kept returning to them. Premier League FBref
That distinction matters.
Sunderland’s recruitment success was not that 15 new players arrived and seamlessly became equally important.
It was that the club rebuilt most of its team, identified a first-choice spine remarkably quickly and then stopped behaving like a side in transition.
First, the 15-signing headline needs correcting
There really were 15 summer transactions.
But “Sunderland integrated 15 new players” is too simple.
Enzo Le Fée, for example, became a permanent Sunderland player on 1 July 2025 but had already spent six months at the club on loan. He had made 18 appearances and been part of the promotion campaign before his permanent transfer was completed. Sunderland AFC
Others were technically part of the recruitment class but barely featured in the Premier League.
Arthur Masuaku played 126 league minutes. Marc Guiu played only 15. At the other end, Robin Roefs played 3,150 minutes, while Le Fée, Granit Xhaka, Noah Sadiki, Omar Alderete and Nordi Mukiele all exceeded 2,780. FBref
So Sunderland did not really ask 15 players to carry the same integration burden.
They concentrated it.
Six summer transactions — Roefs, Le Fée, Xhaka, Sadiki, Alderete and Mukiele — supplied 63.6% of all Premier League minutes played by Sunderland’s recruitment class and 63.5% of its starts. FBref
Figure 1 — Fifteen signings—but Sunderland concentrated the minutes.
That is a more useful way to think about the rebuild.
Sunderland changed almost everything around the squad.
Then they quickly decided which changes mattered most.
Sunderland really did rebuild most of the team
Correcting the 15-player headline should not obscure how extreme the transformation was.
The summer recruitment class accounted for 310 of Sunderland’s 418 available Premier League starts — 74.2%. It played 27,433 of 37,620 available player-minutes, or 72.9%. Premier League FBref
Even if Le Fée is removed because he had already spent half a season under Le Bris, the newcomers still supplied approximately 66.3% of Sunderland’s league starts and 65.1% of their minutes. FBref Sunderland AFC
This was not a Championship side supplemented by a few Premier League additions to support Sunderland’s promotion-side baseline.
Most of Sunderland’s playing time belonged to the rebuild.
The more surprising number is therefore not 15.
It is 63.
Despite replacing such a large share of the side, Sunderland made only 63 starting-XI changes, joint-fewest in the Premier League. Premier League
Squad churn and XI churn turned out to be very different things.
Seven debutants started immediately
Le Bris did not ease the new group into Premier League football.
Seven competitive debutants started Sunderland’s opening league match against West Ham: Roefs, Reinildo, Xhaka, Sadiki, Habib Diarra, Chemsdine Talbi and Simon Adingra. Trai Hume, Dan Ballard, Jenson Seelt and Eliezer Mayenda were the retained players alongside them. Sunderland AFC
That was already a rebuilt team on Matchweek 1.
The remarkable part is what happened afterwards.
By May, Sunderland’s starting XI against Manchester United contained Roefs, Lutsharel Geertruida, Mukiele, Alderete, Reinildo, Xhaka, Sadiki, Le Fée, Talbi and Brian Brobbey, with Hume the only player in that XI who had not been recorded as a summer transaction. Sunderland AFC
Le Fée needs the same qualification as before: he was a summer permanent signing, but not new to the environment.
Even so, nine players in that May XI had genuinely entered Le Bris’ Sunderland set-up during the summer.
The opening-day revolution had not been reversed.
It had become the team.
The rebuilt spine barely changed
The numbers become even clearer when we stop looking at the squad as a whole and follow the most-used players through the middle of it.
Roefs started 35 league matches.
Mukiele started 32.
Alderete started 32.
Sadiki started 33.
Xhaka started 32.
Le Fée started 33.
Hume, one of the strongest surviving links to the promotion side, started 34 after starting 43 Championship matches in 2024/25. FBref FBref
Figure 2 — The rebuilt spine barely changed.
That sequence — Roefs → Mukiele/Alderete → Xhaka/Sadiki → Le Fée, with Hume bridging old Sunderland and new Sunderland — is a better explanation of the integration story than the raw signing count.
The club did not need every transfer to become equally important.
It needed enough of them to create a dependable structure.
Six summer transactions each starting at least 32 league matches meant Sunderland could make a huge personnel change at squad level without repeatedly rebuilding the relationships inside their strongest XI. FBref
That is where continuity came from.
Not from avoiding change.
From deciding very quickly which changes were non-negotiable.
Xhaka was an organisational shortcut
One player helps explain how that new structure could function so quickly.
Granit Xhaka’s Sunderland role stretched across different phases of the game.
Premier League analysis documented him dropping towards the defensive line as an auxiliary defender. At that point in the season, he led Premier League midfielders for clearances, headed clearances and aerial duels won, while ranking second among midfielders for successful long balls and third for passes into the final third. Premier League
That is an unusually broad job description.
Xhaka could help Sunderland defend deeper, provide an extra presence around the back line and still become one of their principal routes for moving possession forward.
Alongside him, Sadiki became one of the most permanent members of the rebuilt side, starting 33 league matches and playing 2,889 minutes. Xhaka started 32 and played 2,904. FBref
It would be too strong to say Xhaka single-handedly integrated the team.
What the evidence does show is that Sunderland placed an experienced, multi-phase midfielder at the centre of an XI otherwise full of newly assembled relationships.
That gave Le Bris a stable connection between defence and progression while the wider structure could change around him.
Stable players did not mean a fixed formation
This is another important distinction.
Selection continuity is not the same as tactical rigidity.
Le Bris had already shown flexibility during the promotion season, using 4-2-3-1, 4-3-3 and 4-4-2 structures. Sunderland could create wide overloads and play quickly through possession, but were also capable of defending deeper and counter-attacking. Premier League
That continued in the Premier League.
Against Everton in November, Sunderland used a 3-4-3 containing Roefs, Mukiele, Ballard, Geertruida, Hume, Xhaka, Sadiki, Reinildo, Bertrand Traoré, Wilson Isidor and Le Fée. Premier League
The shape could move.
Many of the relationships did not.
That is the tactical lesson hidden inside the 63 starting-XI changes.
A manager does not necessarily need the same formation every week to create continuity. He can alter the structure while preserving the players who understand one another’s roles.
For Sunderland, stability came through personnel and relationships more than through drawing the same formation on the tactics board.
The uncomfortable question: were Sunderland really this good?
There is an important danger in telling this story too neatly and especially when considering FIVDA’s earlier analysis of Sunderland’s defensive approach.
Sunderland finished seventh with 54 points, securing European football in an extraordinary first season back in the Premier League. Premier League
But seventh place should not automatically be read as evidence that Sunderland produced the seventh-best underlying football.
Their attacking numbers were much less impressive.
Sunderland took 396 shots, the fewest among Premier League clubs that avoided relegation, while the Premier League’s Opta data put them on only 38.9 xG. Premier League
StatMuse’s model produces a very similar picture: 39.06 xG, 53.75 xGA, 42 actual goals and 48 conceded. That gives Sunderland an expected-goal difference of -14.69, compared with their actual goal difference of -6. StatMuse
Opta’s final Expected Points model went further, placing Sunderland in the bottom three despite their seventh-place finish. Opta itself cautions that expected points is not a perfect measure, so that should not be interpreted as saying Sunderland “deserved” relegation. It does show how far their league position ran ahead of one model of their underlying performances. Opta Analyst
Goalkeeping was one part of the context.
Roefs faced 154 shots on target, made 108 saves, recorded a 70.1% save percentage and kept 10 clean sheets in 35 league starts. Sunderland as a team conceded 48 goals from 53.75 xGA in the StatMuse model. FBref StatMuse
That does not mean Roefs personally “prevented” the entire gap between expected and actual goals conceded. Team defending, finishing, model uncertainty and goalkeeper performance all sit inside that difference.
It does mean Sunderland’s defensive outcome was better than their chance-quality numbers would suggest.
Their recruitment story can therefore be impressive without pretending the final table settled every argument. Sunderland also illustrated the wider 2025/26 gap between results and underlying performance.
Stability may have been the outcome, not the cause
There is another uncertainty worth preserving.
Sunderland’s low number of starting-XI changes does not prove that selection stability caused their success.
Le Bris may simply have discovered an obvious best XI, kept those players fit and had little reason to change it.
Public data cannot tell us what happened inside Sunderland’s recruitment meetings, how quickly players learned the tactical requirements in training or precisely how much repeated selection improved their performances.
What the public evidence can show is the pattern.
Sunderland signed heavily.
Those signings immediately dominated playing time.
Responsibility then became concentrated in a core group.
And despite having transformed most of the team, Sunderland changed their starting XI less often than almost anyone else in the league. Premier League FBref
That sequence is unusual enough to matter.
A promoted team experiencing major recruitment churn does not automatically have to experience permanent selection churn with it. Ipswich, for comparison, had already made 90 starting-XI changes by April 2025 and had not named the same league XI in consecutive matches at that stage. Premier League
Sunderland found a very different route.
What Sunderland’s rebuild actually teaches us
The obvious version of Sunderland’s story is that they signed 15 players and somehow made it work.
The more useful version is narrower.
They did not make 15 players equally important.
They made a small number of new relationships extremely important.
Roefs became the goalkeeper.
Mukiele and Alderete became major defensive pieces.
Xhaka and Sadiki became a remarkably persistent midfield pairing.
Le Fée continued the relationship with Le Bris that had begun during the promotion run.
Hume connected the rebuilt side to the Championship team. FBref Sunderland AFC FBref
That does not make Sunderland’s model automatically repeatable.
Their seventh-place finish ran well ahead of their underlying chance profile, and Expected Points provides a substantial warning against assuming the same process will always produce the same table position. StatMuse Opta Analyst
But the recruitment lesson survives that caution.
A large rebuild does not necessarily require a season of constant experimentation.
Sometimes the fastest route to stability is not signing fewer players.
It is identifying, very quickly, which of the new ones you intend to stop changing.
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As always, thanks for taking the time to read these posts!
JC
Sources for the data presented are referenced within the article.
The main image is from Pixabay by Brian Dowden with the article title overlay.