Sunderland will be aiming to win their fourth match in a row in the Championship but will have a difficult task ahead of them. We face a newly promoted Portsmouth who have avoided being undone by three of the league’s better sides so far and will be seeking to not go into the international break on a negative note.
FORM
Portsmouth haven’t actually won a match this season, finding draws against Leeds United, Luton Town and Middlesbrough and losing out to Millwall in the EFL Cup, but that’s a brilliant start considering their opposition. Playoff finalists Leeds needed a last minute equaliser to avoid defeat, they held relegated Luton Town to a 0-0 draw and Middlesbrough had to come back from behind twice to salvage a point. In that game against Boro, Christian Saydee scored a brace within 25 minutes for them. Pompey concluded preseason with a 2-0 defeat away to Charlton Athletic. Our opponents sit 13th in the table.
Meanwhile we’ve gotten off to our best start ever at this level, it’s the first time we’ve won our opening three league matches in 99 years and the only time we’ve managed to achieve that feat whilst not conceding a single goal. We’ve beaten Cardiff City, Sheffield Wednesday and Burnley in the league but we did exit the League Cup in the first round following a defeat away to Preston North End. Romaine Mundle scored the only goal of the game as we beat Burnley at the Stadium of Light and we did well to see out the win despite going down to ten men for the final minutes of the match. Our warmup fixtures concluded with a respectable 2-2 draw to Ligue 1 Marseille.
INJURIES/SUSPENSIONS
The home side currently have six players out injured and no suspensions. Wales international centre back Regan Poole misses out with an ACL injury, Tom McIntyre (also a centre back) has a problem with his hamstring, left back Jacob Farrell has an injured knee, defensive midfielder Tom Lowery will also be absent due to a hamstring issue, for left winger Josh Murphy it’s his ankle and, finally, striker Colby Bishop continues his recovery from heart surgery. Two of their new signings could feature for the first time, they are, central midfielder Freddie Potts and forward Mark O’Mahony.
We have three injuries currently and one suspension. Jenson Seelt and Niall Huggins both won’t be back until late December/early January and Aji Alese recently picked up an ankle injury. It’s been said he won’t be back for at least three to four weeks, so that would be the Middlesbrough game for a return at the earliest. He is currently being assessed though, so that timeframe could change. Dan Neil was shown two yellow cards in our last match and so won’t be available until Plymouth away after the international break. Both Ian Poveda and Wilson Isidor could make their debuts for Sunderland in this match.
This preview was written on deadline day but neither side registered any new signings before 12PM on the final day of the transfer window, and so, any new signings after this has been published/written won’t be able to feature in this one.
PREDICTION
Winning four in a row would be a remarkable achievement and would convince pretty much everybody that Le Bris is the right man for the job, as mentioned however, Portsmouth are no pushovers. It’s not a stadium that’s been historically kind to us either. I’m going to predict a 1-1 draw, probably with Portsmouth taking the lead before our quality allows us to come away with a valuable point. 10 points after four games would be far better than anyone was expecting before a ball was kicked I’d expect. It’s also important we don’t go into the international fixtures on the back of a defeat, to maintain our momentum.
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