Sunderland welcome Birmingham City to the Stadium of Light in the Championship. Last time out Sunderland drew with Swansea and Birmingham drew with Ipswich. Sunderland had more than 70% possession and 25 shots but ultimately could not find a way past their resolute hosts in a frantic finale as Swansea clung on for a draw which felt like a win after being down to 10 men after half an hour. Tony Mowbray will have to rethink his defensive line up as both Dan Ballard and Luke O’Nien are suspended for this game. Midfielder Chris Rigg is away on international duty. Birmingham remained in 14th place with a home draw against high flying Ipswich, the Blues surrendered a 2-0 lead to finish 2-2. Rooney now has one more chance to claim his first win as Blues boss before the international break. The Blues also have some injury concerns and will also be without suspended Krystian Beilik. Tony Mowbray: "We're all frustrated. I think we were at our best in the first 30 minutes, 11 v 11. We should have been three up. It's frustrating playing against 10 men. "Credit to them [Swansea]. They worked hard, they put their bodies on the line, they defended well and they'll be happy with a point."I'm only disappointed with the fact we didn't put the ball in the net. The performance level was total domination but you've got to score."We do have inexperienced strikers. We're not short on goals but invariably it's not the strikers scoring the goals. We're struggling to find the formula with a centre-forward." Wayne Rooney: "I'm seeing improvement every week. There were good signs against Southampton last week too - and we've now improved on that against a good, tough Ipswich Town side. "We got the team organised, on the front foot, and for 45 minutes we were excellent. That dropped a bit second half and we conceded two goals, which was obviously disappointing. "The subs have to do better when they come on. But I'm pleased with the overall performance levels. It's different to what the players had been used to - and we knew it was never going to happen overnight." Match Appointments: Referee: DEAN WHITESTONE Assistant Referees: Mark Stevens & Alex James Fourth Official: James Bell Team Lineups: Sunderland AFC: (4-2-3-1) Patterson, Cirkin, Seelt, Hume, Huggins, Ekwah, Neil, Clarke, Jobe, Roberts, Rusyn. Subs: Bishop, Triantis, Dack, Ba, Pritchard, Hemir, Bennette, Aouchiche, Mayenda Injured: Evans, Alese, Matete, Pembele Suspended: Ballard, O’Nien Birmingham (4-3-3) Ruddy, Laird, Sanderson, Aiwu, Drameh, Sunjic, James, Bacuna, Miyoshi, Stansfield, Burke Subs: Etheridge, Roberts, Hogan, Hall, Jutkiewicz, Dembélé, Gardner, Longelo, Long Injured: Chang, Buchanan, Anderson, Roberts. Suspended: Bielik Betting Odds: Sunderland 5/3 Birmingham 5/1 Draw 19/5 Prutton Predicts: meh My two pence: A frustrating but enjoyable game last weekend. Hopefully Tony has been drilling the new look defence and has had them all doing double shooting practice. Surely Rusyn must start as he looks like our most dangerous striker. I’m going for a 2-0 home win. Live Stream: This game is live on Sky Sports Football Also on SAFC LIVE https://safc.com/news/team-news/live-video Ha’way the Lads
Rusyn, Hemir and Burstow just need a goal from somewhere even if it goes in off their arse. I think for each individual if that happened we would see an entirely different player. It will come maybe this Saturday may be not but I trust TM in my entirety to make this happen the best he can. Great match report RTB and I think your right with moving Hume into the middle rather than bringing Triantis. Great opportunity for another 'youngun' to make a name for himself. Hopefully we can have a game and comments that bring a lot less negativity that has been coming through this board from the hindsight squad. So going for a 3 - 1 with Clarke, Roberts and Rusyn score....also hope to see Mayenda to play apart.
All down to how we set up and deal with having our 2 first choice centre backs who are out. Going to be an interesting one. Just realised it's early KO again!
Our recent record against these is decent and we must ensure we carry that on at the weekend. Opportunity for Seelt to show what he's got, they've got some big lads so worry about our ariel defending at set pieces. Crowd have a job to do and help the lads over the line for 3 points. HTL.
Cracking thread as always. I think you have probably nailed the team. I would be tempted to play Ba instead of Roberts but what you have done will do for me. Test without our centre backs I suppose. Stansfield for them is a handful up front so will be warchful of that. If we can dominate possession and be forward minded in our passing we should have too much for Birminghams defensive capability though.
Another top thread RTB , I think your team will more or less be TM's choice for this game , it won't be easy against Sanderson & Co. but play with energy and use our bench assertively and we should be OK. OaU.
Looking forward to this one, chance to see some new faces in the starting line up, my first game since Watford and will take the same scoreline!
Think we will be well up for it on Saturday and we may even find that the change at the back might help our attackers as I think recently Roberts has suffered from a lack of an overlapping full back as Hume tends to step into a more defensive midfield role when we have possession so that Dan Neil can get further forward. this leaves us a bit short on the right side of the pitch. I think DN will probably be less attacking on Saturday and will anchor the midfield which should release Huggins to support Roberts which I hope will give more space for our strikers. Here's hoping anyway but I am going for a 4-1 victory as I believe our possession and tactics may well be too much for them.
Their form over the last 5 has seen them pick up the same number of points as us. You would expect them to target our CB area, so its up to us to keep them busy at the other end of the pitch, 2-1 to the lads
Hopefully we can actually create some chances for the striker that starts for once. Want to see a natural 10 playing whether it be Adil or Pritch. If we don't create good chances and continue to rely on shots from distance and Clarke doing something from nothing then it's going to be a long day. Would also like to see Ba start over Roberts, Roberts looks the better player but Ba creates and scores more and is a great outball with his leap. 1-1.
Agreed,he's a good player. In fact,when we look at getting all our injured/suspended players back and/or ready......we have an exciting squad.....Aji,Evans,Matete and Pembele..who we haven't seen yet! Not forgetting poor Embo. If we can get one or two of our strikers firing on a regular basis....we can have a great second half to the season.
And thats before we even factor in any January business, took us until the latter end of last season to really get going so could see similar this year too
