Thank goodness the international break is over. That’s three so far since the season started and it certainly gets in the way of club football – and judging by the number of players who pull out of playing for their country they seemingly feel the same.
Ask any football fan and most will tell you they don’t enjoy the break from club football and the Nations League doesn’t really get the pulses racing. For Sunderland, at least, in terms of the break, there was a massive plus for one player in particular.
It seems ridiculous to say it but Northern Ireland’s two international matches were the perfect warm-up games for Dan Ballard. Normally you’d expect club football to prepare a player for internationals. Not so in Ballard’s case. He needed game-time after his ankle injury and the two matches – meaningless in that Northern Ireland have romped their group – have given Ballard just what he needed. And Regis Le Bris will be delighted too.
Had Sunderland played, Ballard is likely to have sat on the bench given the form of the team’s back four. Now with Trai Hume suspended for Saturday, Ballard will step straight back in, possibly in Hume’s position or more likely in central defence, with Luke O’Nien switched to right back.
It will be interesting to see what Le Bris does.
The defence have been the backbone of Sunderland’s rise to the top of the Championship this season with Hume, Chris Mepham, O’Nien and Dennis Cirkin superb so far. Ballard has only featured five times and Mepham’s excellent form in his place has been nothing short of exemplary.
But that back four will lose one of its strongest links at Millwall and so the international break, although not for everyone, could not have been more timely for Ballard and the club.
View news Source: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sunderland-handed-selection-dilemma-after-30420736
