Sunderland will be aiming to bounce back from a poor second half showing away to Plymouth Argyle last week and continue their 100 percent home record this season. It won’t be an easy task however because we face a Middlesbrough side who are once again gunning for a playoff spot and, as we all know, always treat this fixture with far more seriousness than we tend to.
FORM
In Middlesbrough’s last five games, they’ve only managed one victory and have drawn and lost two each. That sole win came against Cardiff City in the Welsh capital, the draws versus Portsmouth and Preston North End at the Riverside and the defeats came at the hands of Derby County and Stoke City (the latter of which knocked them out of the League Cup). Their most recent fixture was them hosting Preston, Tommy Conway gave them the lead before Mads Frøkjær-Jensen equalised for the visitors.
Despite seeing defeat in our last fixture in Devon, we are in fine form and have won three of our last four league fixtures. Those wins came at the expense of Sheffield Wednesday, Burnley and Portsmouth. Two losses have occurred in the most recent five games for us, a League Cup tie away to Preston and the aforementioned Championship loss to Plymouth. In that latest outing, Patrick Roberts put us ahead from the penalty spot in the first half, then a Dan Ballard own goal and a Ryan Hardie penalty reversed the score. Romaine Mundle’s late goal seemed to have clinched us a point but, unfortunately, Joe Edwards scoring in stoppage time meant the hosts earned all three points.
INJURIES/SUSPENSIONS
The visitors have a number of players out injured at the moment. Left back Alex Bangura has been sidelined with an Achilles tendon injury until mid October, defensive midfielder Jonny Howson is a doubt, as is centre back Rav van den Berg. Marcus Forss (right wing) will be absent with a hamstring problem until, at least, later this month, right back Tommy Smith also has an Achilles issue and will also not be able to play until the middle of next month. Darragh Lenihan and Dael Fry (both centre backs) continue to be long term absentees. Boro have no suspensions currently.
For us, Jenson Seelt and Niall Huggins remain injured, with a return for either not likely until late December/early January. Aji Alese can’t come back until after the November international break, which starts in the first half of the month, and Alan Browne has been ruled out for this one after having picked up some sort of injury to his knee (he was seen wearing a brace on it during the summer signings talk-in event). It was said at the time that this was precautionary as he awaits the results of a scan, and in his pre-match presser, RLB has confrimed he will miss this game, but is only expected to out for a week so he should be back in contention for the Watford game. Salis Abdul Samed isn’t injured but will need another couple of games out to catch up on fitness, he hasn’t played any football since June of this year. We also have no suspensions going into this one.
PREDICTIONS
Middlesbrough always have a lot more at stake for these games than we do (their fans consider this to be their main rivalry, we do not) and they usually step up accordingly. We haven’t been pushovers for most of this season though and I doubt Le Bris would allow that excuse to be a valid reason for us failing to win this one. Boro seem to be missing a lot of players and have dropped points in games they would be expecting to win a few times already. Let’s go with a 2-2 draw for this one then.
