"I’m going" - Player drops claim on his Sunderland AFC exit | OneFootball

It was an easy decision to move away from the Stadium of Light for this player.

Timothée Pembélé wanted to leave Sunderland on loan this summer as soon as he heard of Le Havre's interest in him.

Changes in leadership in any setting often lead to casualties, but especially in football. Sunderland burned through three different first-team bosses in one season, not all of them permanent ones, before landing on their current head coach Regis Le Bris, who they will be very happy with.

There's always a risk when there's new people in charge of them not liking certain players that have been brought in by their predecessors; that has happened a lot with Le Bris. The likes of Adil Aouchiche, Abdoullah Ba and Nazariy Rusyn have all struggled for first-team minutes. The only reason why any of them have played under this new regime is due to others' injuries.

Pierre Ekwah - a midfielder that may have been considered a bright spark under previous management - moved on to St Etienne in the summer because he'd dropped down the pecking order so drastically.

Pembélé's situation wasn't much different to those four. The prospect of getting minutes was slim, again, and he got a move back to France, one that he leaped at when he heard about the opportunity with Le Havre - Ba's former club.

Timothée Pembélé makes Sunderland AFC exit revelation

The 22-year-old defender, who was bought by Sunderland from Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2023, when Tony Mowbray was in charge, has said that it didn't take him long to make the decision that he wanted to get out of the northeast this summer when the French side came calling.

He told Paris Normadie: "I really didn’t think that HAC would come looking for me! I was in second division in England, I wasn’t playing, and I thought I’d go back to Ligue 2.

"I have confidence in myself, I know I have the ability to play in Ligue 1, but in today’s football, when a player doesn’t play, he’s quickly forgotten.

"When my agent told me that Le Havre were interested in me, I said straight out, ‘Let’s go! I didn’t look to see where I stood in the pecking order, I just said to myself, I’m going, I’m fighting, and we’ll see what happens!

"In the end, it (the deal) took a bit of time. I signed in the last few days of the window, and the coach gave me a warm welcome, telling me that I needed to get my rhythm back.

"So, I played one match with the reserves. In England, I played quite a few games with the reserves, and I was fed up with playing with younger players. But the coach explained to me that I had to play 90 minutes to get into a rhythm. After that, it was one thing after another."

Pembélé also admitted that he wasn't enjoying his football as much during his time at Sunderland, compared to the more regular game time that he is now getting with Le Havre.

"It’s not that I’d lost it, but I was in a different mindset," the ex-PSG defender added. "I wasn’t playing, so there wasn’t the same pleasure in going to training.

"I was going to training for myself, because I needed to keep up a rhythm, because there was surely a project waiting for me."

Sunderland must put plans in place for a potential Timothee Pembele summer exit

This loan move has probably opened the 22-year-old's eyes that a future with Sunderland is maybe not the best one for him; that playing regularly is better than being on the bench/in the reserves.

Sunderland must be aware of how much more he is enjoying himself back in France compared to his time on Wearside, and so they must start to put some level of plans in place that will allow him to leave permanently in the summer, if that's what both parties want.

He was bought for an undisclosed fee and signed a deal that schedules him to stick around at the Stadium of Light until 2028. They should be able to get a good return on him, especially if he continues to thrive in Ligue 1.