Nie za szybko? That is the question hanging over Sunderland now, and it is not some lazy warning from the outside. It is the obvious reaction to a club that can beat Alkmaar 1:0 and Torreense 2:1 in the Europa League, then turn around and lose four consecutive Premier League matches to sit last in the league. That is not balance. That is strain.
Sunderland’s rise has been one of the most dramatic stories in English football. In 2017, Netflix documented the club in Aż po grób during the worst moment in its history, and since 2021 Kyril Louis-Dreyfus has run the club through a rapid climb that has taken it back to the Premier League. Last season ended with players celebrating promotion and thanking the fans. This season, the mood has split in two: European wins on one side, domestic failure on the other.
The problem is not the progress. It is the pace.
That tension matters because Sunderland were always going to be judged harshly after promotion. Many had already tipped them to fight relegation, and four straight league defeats have done nothing to calm that fear. The club can point to the 1:0 against Alkmaar and the 2:1 against Torreense and claim there is life in the project. But those results do not cancel out the fact that Sunderland are last in the league.
This is where the romantic version of the story starts to meet reality. The club’s recent history has been unusually dramatic and widely documented, and that can create a false sense that momentum alone will solve everything. It will not. The line now is that the squad is being stretched across Europe and the Premier League, and that is exactly what the evidence suggests. Sunderland are competing on multiple fronts, but they are not yet showing they can handle both.
There is a temptation to talk about the rise and ignore the warning signs. After all, Louis-Dreyfus has overseen a stunning turnaround since 2021, and the club’s trajectory has been impressive. But the current picture is messy. The European results say one thing. The league table says something much harsher. And until Sunderland find a way to make those two versions of themselves look less contradictory, every discussion around Lech Poznań Vs Sunderland will carry the same uncomfortable edge: has this climb been too quick for the squad to absorb?
At the moment, that is the question that matters more than the romance of the comeback. Sunderland are back on a bigger stage, yes. But they are also being reminded, very publicly, that rising fast is not the same as being ready.
