Sunderland will again have to make a late decision on the fitness of Aiden McGeady on Thursday, but Jack Ross is anxious not to paint it as the moment which will decide whether or not the club returns to Wembley this season.
Aiden McGeady has been nursed through Black Cats games since he broke a bone in his foot at Accrington Stanley in April, getting through the games that have mattered the most with the help of pain-killing injections, sitting out those that were less important.
That was the plan for Saturday’s play-off semi-final first leg at home to Portsmouth, but it quickly became apparent to McGeady that his latest injection had not had the desired effect. Ross pulled him from the line-up immediately, and now must wait to see how McGeady feels ahead of Thursday’s second leg.
“He’s not any different to how he was before the first leg, so we’ll just wait and make a decision on him,” Ross said. “It will have to be a sensible decision and we’ll wait to see how he feels and then decide on the right course of action.”
If it had been anybody else, Sunderland might well have just written him off, told him to give his foot the rest it needed and concentrated on getting him fit again for the summer. McGeady, though, is not anyone else. He was Sunderland’s player of the year, and their only representative in the Professional Footballer’s Association’s team of the year, a 92-cap international who has played in the Champions League, Premier League and at the European Championships.
A team-sheet without McGeady’s name on it will be a boost to Portsmouth morale so unsurprisingly Sunderland’s manager was keen to play down his importance.
“I’ve got a lot of good players,” he was at pains to point out. “The very simple answer is we won the game on Saturday without him. We didn’t beat Portsmouth when he was playing, as much as he played well in those games. Even though we know how big a player he is for us, there are a lot of different facets to winning a game over and above one players.”
Ross can say what he likes – Sunderland’s chances of turning a 1-0 aggregate lead into two-legged success are much greater the longer McGeady is able to play.
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Can Sunderland gamble on McGeady? Who makes way for Maguire? Key second-leg issues
