Jack Ross reveals what he admires about Sunderland skipper George Honeyman and why he had to sub him

The Scot subbed skipper George Honeyman, who had been booked, after just 59 minutes at Fratton Park, with Chris Maguire replacing him with the scoreline 2-1 in favour of the hosts.

Portsmouth went on to win the top of the table clash 3-1 to extend their lead to eight points over Sunderland.

When Honeyman left the field, Ross could be seen speaking to his skipper for several seconds before he took his place on the bench.

Ross says Honeyman, who is nursing an ankle injury, is desperate to train and play all the time which he admires but stressed as manager he has to be sensible and ensure the midfielder was fine to play his part for the rest of the festive period.

Ross said: George has been troubled by an ankle injury recently but his character and determination means he trains and plays sometimes when he shouldn’t - I admire that in him.

“He wants to play every minute of every game but we have to look after him because we have a lot of big games coming up.

“And with the way the game was going - I’m not saying we’d given up on it, we hadn’t - but we had to make sensible decisions.”