Jack Ross is not ready to throw in the towel on automatic promotion - although he admits Sunderland’s draw against Portsmouth means it is now a ‘long-shot’.
The Black Cats were held by Pompey at the Stadium of Light, with Tom Flanagan’s early goal cancelled out by Jamal Lowe, and that means Sunderland must win their two remaining games to have any chance of finishing in the top two, and even then they would be relying on Luton Town and Barnsley to lose on the final day, and they also have ground to make up on goal difference.
Ross knows his side are almost certainly heading for the play-offs, but insists they will go into Tuesday’s game in hand at Fleetwood Town aiming to win and at least put some pressure on their promotion rivals.
“We still have that outside chance - albeit it is a long-shot - but the only way that even becomes a possibility is if we win on Tuesday,” said Ross.
“We’ve had a consistency this season about how we’ve tried to behave, conducted ourselves, prepare, and that will continue to be the case.
“We want to continue the performance level from today into Tuesday, win the game and then see where it takes us at the weekend, and whatever lies ahead for us after that we will be ready for.
“The encouraging thing for us today is that we produced that level of performance against a good team, and if we do that in the next couple of games and if there are [play-off] games after that, we will be OK.”
Sunderland’s showdown against Portsmouth was billed as a ‘must-win’ for both sides and the draw suited neither.
The Black Cats’ chances of automatic promotion are vanishingly slim, while Pompey’s fate is no longer in their own hands.
But Ross says he could not fault his players’ efforts against the South Coast side, pointing out that Pompey keeper Craig MacGillivray made three brilliant saves to deny Lewis Morgan, Charlie Wyke, and Will Grigg.
He said: “I couldn’t have asked any more from my players in terms of the performance they gave.
“Both teams came into the game under big pressure, so to produce that level of performance in those conditions - I’m proud of them for that.
“It was a frustrating day for us.
“It’s not an exact science, so effort and performance doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll get what you deserve from it and I thought we deserved to win the game.
“We haven’t, and we have to dust ourselves down.
“They are desperate, and their hunger and desire was obvious in their performance today.
“But if you look at both teams needing to try and win the game, there was only one team that really could do that in the latter part of the game - not because Portsmouth didn’t want to, but because we were good.
“We were good today, we created a lot of opportunities, but we came up against a very good goalkeeper who had a terrific game.
“Craig MacGillivray saves from Lewis early in the game, touching it onto the post, he saved from Charlie Wyke just before half-time, and he actually saved Will Grigg’s effort onto the post as well.
“Jon McLaughlin has had some really good games for us this season but I don’t know if Craig will have had many better ones this season in terms of the significance of the saves he made against us because they were top saves at important times for Portsmouth.”
