Sunderland have a great chance to extend an unbeaten run to seven matches as Le Bris’ men travel to play a Preston team who could definitely be faring better than they currently are.
FORM
Despite their lowly league position, Preston’s recent form is pretty average. Their last four Championship games have yielded five points, with draws against Norwich City and Plymouth Argyle, a win at home to Coventry City and a defeat to Bristol City. An expected loss against Arsenal in the League Cup completes their last five results in all competitions. With just one defeat from their last six league matches, they are beginning to establish themselves as a plucky outfit, capable of taking points from anybody in the division. Saying that, they do definitely need to start winning games rather than just avoiding defeat to really kick on this season. Their most recent game was the defeat at home to Bristol City, City took the lead early on then Sam Greenwood found an equalsier a few minutes into the second half. Just three minutes after this though, the away team retook the lead and a late goal finished the game off for the score to end 3-1.
11 points from the last possible 15 keeps us top of the league. The three wins came against Luton Town, Hull City and Oxford United and the draws against Leeds United and QPR. The only sort of disappointing result out of those was not managing to beat Queens Park Rangers, but it’s entirely understandable when down to ten men. The quick turnaround between that game and this one does offer us a chance to make amends, particularly with some of the deficiencies our attacking performance had in the capital.
INJURIES/SUSPENSIONS
Preston are without some key players for this game. Left wing back and Republic of Ireland international Robbie Brady, centre back Patrick Bauer and strikers Ched Evans and Will Keane (both of the strikers being internationals for Wales and Ireland respectively) are all out through injury. Additionally, forward, Montenegro international and their joint-top scorer (the other being Sam Greenwood) Milutin Osmajiç is still serving a ban for biting a Blackburn Rovers player back in September.
And for us, Niall Huggins remains injured with an unclear timeframe (his return may not come this season), Jenson Seelt should be back in January, Ian Poveda will be available again sometime this month, Ahmed Abdullahi’s debut could be as early as the middle of this month or as late as early December, for Salis Abdul Samed, his will come in early December and Aji Alese is looking at after this month's international break for a return to action. Dan Ballard and Chris Rigg are both back for this one but Anthony Patterson will have to wait for the weekend.
PREDICTIONS
I’m going to say we win this one because we’ve been very good at bouncing back from dropped points so far this season and I don’t think there are many reasons to doubt we can do it again. Preston are a hard team to beat and they may be able to find an equaliser during the match but I think we will win 2-1.
