As Jobe Bellingham strode imperiously across midfield, Romaine Mundle danced down the left wing and Sunderland fans dared to start believing again, Scott Parker’s frown deepened.
Burnley arrived here protecting a 100% Championship record but departed thoroughly outclassed by a young, and extremely precocious, home team.
It is early days for Régis Le Bris but the Frenchman who arrived from relegated Lorient this summer has presided over three straight second-tier wins. It is the first time Sunderland have opened a campaign with not only a trio of league victories but three clean sheets.
It puts them top of the table on goal difference and not to be underestimated. Fast, fluid and fluent, they are a blur of slick passing and movement, operating within the framework of an often ferociously high, hard press. For long periods Burnley, flattered considerably by the scoreline, did not know what had hit them.
They scored nine goals in their first two league games but here they barely mustered a shot on target, despite Sunderland’s reduction to 10 men after Dan Neil’s 85th-minute sending-off for a second bookable offence, namely a late foul on Zeki Amdouni.
“I liked the way we played but I’m not really surprised,” said Le Bris who had earlier described this as his players’ first real test. “It wasn’t perfect but this team are willing and you can already feel the cohesion with the fans. We need to keep improving but the connections are good.”
Chris Rigg turned 17 in June, but like Bellingham – or simply Jobe as Jude’s 18-year-old brother likes to be known these days – he is another Sunderland midfielder fast becoming a magnet for Premier League scouts. The game had barely begun before a swipe of his left foot resulted in the ball flying fractionally off target as the ruthless efficiency of the Le Bris press began asking Burnley questions they struggled to answer.
Sunderland were beginning life without Jack Clarke but as Patrick Roberts and Dan Neil had shots blocked and Mundle miscued an inviting opening conjured by Bellingham, they barely missed their Ipswich-bound winger.
Providing Clarke’s £15m-£20m transfer fee finances the long-awaited arrival of a specialist centre-forward – something Sunderland operated without last season – Parker will not be the only away manager wearing an increasingly puzzled look here this term.
Sunderland were ahead at the interval, Mundle’s angled shot having been far too good for even a goalkeeper as highly rated as James Trafford, after the former Standard Liège winger cleverly manoeuvred himself into a spare yard of space and met a ball across the six-yard box from Sunderland’s excellent right-winger, Patrick Roberts. On this evidence, Mundle is a very decent replacement for Clarke.
Much as that finish was highly impressive, Parker will have been dismayed by the way his right back, Connor Roberts, failed to second-guess the 21-year-old. In fairness to Roberts, Burnley seemed a collective half yard off the pace and, eclipsed by their hosts’ kaleidoscopic movement, appeared distinctly one-dimensional.
Although a counterattacking Andreas Hountondji headed wide deep in first-half stoppage time, precious little was seen of the visitors as an attacking force as Sunderland forced numerous chances. Tellingly, Anthony Patterson remained largely a spectator until, a minute after Neil’s dismissal, he saved Lyle Foster’s shot.
“It’s a bitter disappointment, we never really had control,” said Parker. “But we were playing a very good side.”
