Black Cats pair Gordon and Nosworthy look set to face Hammers

Apr 4 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

Nosworthy played an hour of Sunderland’s reserve-team win away to Liverpool on Thursday, and could be pressed into action today.

George McCartney’s calf injury has further complicated the situation. Danny Collins will move to left-back, leaving a difficult decision to make over who should partner Anton Ferdinand in the centre. On-loan Calum Davenport is unable to face his parent club , while Tal Ben-Haim and Paul McShane have been on international duty in Greece and Italy respectively. “Paul McShane played 90 minutes (for the Republic of Ireland) and the plan was for Nyron to have 45-60 minutes in the reserves,” said Sbragia. “He’ll definitely be in the squad, it might even be a case of him starting, but he’ll definitely travel with us.”

Nosworthy would have played longer had the West Ham game not been less than 48 hours away. Although he has not played first-team football for seven weeks because of a hamstring injury, Sbragia has no concerns that the 28-year-old will be ready for a Premier League start.

“He’s had a couple of practice matches as well so he’s reasonably fit,” he said. “He might not be totally match-fit but he’ll be reasonably match-fit.”

Sbragia’s assessment of his returning internationals will be fundamental to today’s team selection. The Trinidad and Tobago trio of Kenwyne Jones, Carlos Edwards and Dwight Yorke only met up with the squad at 2pm yesterday, while David Healy has been representing Northern Ireland. But a more important consideration will be the fact Sunderland have been sliding towards the Premier League relegation zone.

“The performance against Wigan was the poorest I’ve had in 14 or 15 games so I might have to freshen it up and get new personnel because the way we’re going there’ve not been the results,” Sbragia added. “That’s been on my mind for two weeks now, to be honest.”

Kieran Richardson returns from a two-match suspension to face his old club.