Wilson Isidor is looking every inch a top flight-class striker

It was one of the most commonly-discussed talking points during Sunderland’s 2024/2025 season — “Does Wilson Isidor ever score a normal goal?”

During his maiden campaign on Wearside, the Frenchman drew plaudits for an array of spectacular strikes — including a sumptuous over-the-shoulder volley against Oxford and a sublime flicked effort against Coventry City — and it eventually got to the point where we wondered whether the charismatic striker was actually capable of scoring mundane tap-ins or converting simple chances inside the penalty area!

However, after Isidor boosted his popularity even further with his equaliser against Aston Villa on Sunday (an ‘easy’ finish by his standards, sliding the ball past Emiliano Martinez after Granit Xhaka’s well-judged header), I think it’s fair to say that the former Zenit St Petersburg forward is mastering the art of taking chances when they come and realising that in order to make an impact in the Premier League, efficiency rather than beauty is often the name of the game.

This was Isidor’s third league goal of the season, following his winner against Brentford and his game-settling strike against West Ham, and like so many of his teammates, he seems to be adapting to life in the top flight impressively, turning in a lively display against Villa as we fought back from Reinildo’s dismissal and Matty Cash’s opener to grab a draw.

Of course, defences at this level are far more spiteful than those Isidor regularly got the better of in the Championship, but he was clearly brought to Wearside on the basis that he could hopefully unlock an even greater level of performance if and when we were promoted, and slowly but surely, that’s exactly what’s happening.

Looking at the bigger picture, that a newly-promoted side can call upon a strike force of Isidor, Eliezer Mayenda and Brian Brobbey is not to be sniffed at, and they’ll all have key roles to play during 2025/2026, with Régis Le Bris clearly willing to rotate when necessary.

I daresay you’d be hard pressed to find a Sunderland fan anywhere in the world with a bad word to say about Isidor, and rightly so, because what is there to dislike about him?

He plays football with a smile on his face, he clearly loves playing for Sunderland and as we’ve seen from his social media posts, the club seems to have gotten under his skin — yet there’s also a fiercely competitive streak in his makeup as well.

When compared to Mayenda — a relentless and tireless striker who’ll chase and hassle opponents all day — Isidor’s slightly more languid style can often be mistaken for a lack of effort or even a lack of care, but don’t be fooled, because he has a gift for making tricky finishes look easy; he’s determined to help his side to achieve positive results and as we saw on Sunday, his awareness and ability to make runs at just the right moment is a trait that’ll serve him well at this level.

Isidor’s contribution to our draw with Unai Emery’s side also earned him the unique distinction of becoming the first player in the history of the Premier League to score in a newly-promoted side’s first three home games of the season.

In ten years’ time, that statistic will doubtless be pub quiz fodder, but here and now, he’s doing more than his share of the work as our promising start to the season continues. Two of his three goals have been set up by Granit Xhaka, and as the games go by, he’ll hopefully start to build greater connections with his teammates — which in turn should lead to even more chances and goals.

It’s been well documented that making the step up from the Championship to the Premier League is often a tricky task for a striker, with plenty of prolific second tier forwards finding the going much trickier once they make it to the highest level.

It’s still early days for both Isidor and Sunderland, but you can only judge on what you see over the course of ninety minutes and perhaps there’s a degree of pleasant surprise at how things have gone so far.

At the Stadium of Light in particular, he looks every inch a player who’s cut out for this level, and if he can take that form into our away matches and start to convert chances in the Premier League’s tougher environments, the pundits and fans — both of a Sunderland and opposition persuasion — really will be sitting up and taking notice.

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