After Isidore, Roman Mundell, Aleksic and Abdullahi scored, Sunderland beat South Shields 4-0 in a pre-season friendly. Sunderland coach Le Bris said that the team should enjoy the positive impact brought by the new players so that the players can improve their competitiveness in the new Premier League season.

In the 2024/25 Championship, Sunderland qualified for the promotion play-offs with a fourth-place finish, and eventually defeated Sheffield United 2-1 in the final to advance to the Premier League. In the first round of the 2025/26 Premier League, Sunderland will host West Ham at home.

Sunderland manager Le Brice said, "This pre-season game is more like a training session for the team. We split the lineup into two and let 22 players play 45 minutes each. The significance of this game is to re-establish the feeling of the game. Overall, the performance was good and the conditions were good. Now is a critical period for the team to build relationships."

“We built a good team culture last season and now is the right time to welcome Habib Diarra and help him understand his role on the field and build tacit understanding with his teammates in order to be competitive in the Premier League in the future. This will of course take some time, but we must also enjoy the positive impact of the new players coming in as they strengthen the team’s squad.”

Le Bris also said, "It's great to see Neil Huggins, Jensen Sylt and Abdullahi all perform well because they were plagued by injuries last season."

“When you have good quality, you naturally want to play, but they haven’t been able to do that in the past. Now they have a full pre-season and we know that laying the foundation is crucial for future development, so it’s great to see how they perform.”