Match Day Thread Heart of Midlothian FC v Sunderland AFC - Saturday 26th July 2025 - KO 15:00

Sunderland face Hearts in a pre-season friendly at Tynecastle Park
Last time out Sunderland lost to Sporting and Hearts beat Dumbarton.
Régis Le Bris says Wilson Isidor and Niall Huggins were left out of Sunderland's squad against Sporting Lisbon as a precaution. The pair were absent from the 1-0 draw against the Portuguese champions, a game in which the Black Cats played well and were probably unlucky to lose. Wilson Isidor took a whack to his knee in the draw with Sevilla on Saturday but the issue is not serious, while Huggins was rested after a demanding recent schedule. Having missed all of last season through injury, Sunderland want to proceed carefully to give him the best chance of succeeding.
Anthony Patterson and Chris Rigg were again absent, but Le Bris says they should be available as Sunderland return to action against Hearts or Hull City over the next week. Reinildo will miss those games as he builds his match fitness. but Sunderland are confident that he will be ready for the start of the season. The former Atletico Madrid defender's season finished considerably later as a result of the Club World Cup.

Hearts scored four goals for the fourth successive Premier Sports Cup match, easing past Dumbarton at Tynecastle to ensure passage to the last 16 on maximum points with goals from Shankland, Steinwender, Kyziridis and Braga
Hearts have signed Albanian winger Sabah Kerjota, 23-year-old Sabah joins the Jambos on a three-year deal from Italian Serie C side US Sambenedettese for an undisclosed fee.
Former Black Cats keeper Craig Gordon is unlikely to feature for Hearts after picking up an injury.

Regis le Bris:
"Wilson took a bit of a kick to his knee in the last game, he trained yesterday but it will a little bit stiff this morning," Le Bris said.
"So we just decided to avoid any risk with this game. I'm not worried at the moment. Then with Niall, he has had eight consecutive days of training and I think the last one was too much. Again, we just decided against a risky situation for him."
"For Anthony and Riggy, I think next week they should be available for us if everything progresses as we hope," Le Bris said.
"Reinildo has started a little bit later, so he will need I think maybe one week or ten days to get into his best shape. The foundations need to be laid and then he will start the full training sessions and come into the games."
Derek McInnes:
“I picked the wrong team,” said McInnes at full-time. “I picked a team that was to try to get minutes and we thought that we could still be effective. I thought we were effective at times but not enough. But 2-0 up at half time, don't want to grumble too much at that, but it was clear that we needed to get to bylines more and we needed more natural width. You know, trying to kind of shoehorn people in wasn't quite fair on the lads.
“We were always going to go to a back four for the second half. it was our intention. Kerjota has only probably got about 20 minutes in him. It was always the intention to get Kyziridis on, who we're building up his minutes. So I think you've seen in the second half a wee bit more fluency, a wee bit more tempo to the play, a bit more of what we wanted us to see.
Team Lineups:
Sunderland AFC Squad: Moore, Hume, Seelt, Ballard, H.Jones, Sadiki, Le Fee, Diarra, Talbi, Adingra, Mayenda.

Subs from: Noukeu, Patterson, Aleksic, Roberts, Rigg, Triantis, Johnson, Isidor, Abdullahi, Tutierov, J. Jones, Lavery, Bainbridge, Middlemas, Ogunsuyi.
Injured: O’Nien, Alese, Cirkin, Hjelde, Mundle, Huggins,

Hearts: Fulton, Kingsley, Kent, Steinwender, Spittal, Devlin, Nieuwenhof, Kartum, Kabangu, Wilson, Shankland.
Subs from: Clark, Halkett, Braga, Milne, Dhanda, McEntee, Kyziridis, Baningime, Borchgrevink, Forrest, Findlay.

My two pence:
I'm sure that Derek McInnes was linked with us back in the dark days but it's strange how things have turned around since then. Regis should have a better idea of his starting lineup and I think he'll go with a similar line up to the team that started the first half against Sporting.
Hearts played last night (Wednesday) and may shuffle their squad depending on fitness.

I’m going for a 2-1 Sunderland win

Live Stream:
https://www.safc.com/videos (£6.99)


Ha’way the Lads

 

Woo Hoo!!!

 

Cracking thread as always @RTB shame i wont be there to see the lads live, but will be watching on the telly with a couple of beers.

Another decent run out for the Squad, curious to see if the starting 11 is mixed up a bit from the Portugal games.

 

Buzzing for this one, can't wait to see the new boys live

 

Gutted to be missing this one, will be a great day out

 

Could’ve done without Boro being around tbh.

 

Be interesting to see how Shankland plays. He could still be the missing piece! (And yes I am taking the mick)

 

I've been saying for 2 years he's PL quality

 

Easily spotted with their 3 heads so should be able to dodge them with ease

 

I did wonder if you would reply!

 

Over 7000 of them too…

 

I'm going for an exhibition footy match and a high scoring draw. Yes we should win but fk it its CG's day.

 

Haha couldn't resist

Looking forward to seeing how hearts look, sounds like they've recruited well

 

With Tony Bloom now investing in them, it could make it interesting for the old firm. Might not be the cakewalk they normally expect.

 

Hearts fans rightly buzzing about Bloom being on board now. McInnes is a smart choice for them as well

Aim has to be to finish best of the rest and challenge for a cup

 

So will we play two different teams again, or give some player say 60 mins to improve their match fitness? No matter what I am looking forward to seeing the same front six play together.

 

Players will play 60 and then changes then is my opinion

Heard today that Gordon will start for Hearts but they aren't sure how long he will play

 

It's good that they are taking all of their home crowd with them

 

Now they’ve lost Leeds, Newcastle and Sunderland it’s the nearest thing to a derby for them …

… they’ve become the club no one really cares about.