Charlton 0 Sunderland 0: Story of the day as Cats are held at The Valley and Nathan Broadhead returns

Sunderland have started on the front foot and almost took the lead from a corner there.

Pritchard’s in-swinging delivery was met by the head of Stewart but the effort was straight at MacGillivray.

It looks like Sunderland have started with a back three, with Winchester as the right-sided centre-back and Gooch and Cirkin as the wing-backs.

Pritchard is playing just behind Stewart and Broadhead.

It’s one change from Sunderland’s win at Wigan with Nathan Broadhead replacing Elliot Embleton.

It will be the striker’s first appearance since December after recovering from a long-term hamstring injury.

That could mean the Black Cats switch to a 3-5-2 formation to match Charlton up - perhaps with Carl Winchester as the right-sided centre-back.

There’s no Jermain Defoe or Leon Dajaku on the bench, while Danny Batth remains absent.

Here are our predicted line-ups for today’s match.

Predicted Sunderland XI: Patterson; Winchester, Wright, Xhemajli, Cirkin; Evans, Matete; Gooch, Pritchard, Embleton; Stewart

Predicted Charlton XI: MacGillivray; Lavelle, Famewo, Gunter; Matthews, Gilbey, Dobson, Morgan, Purrington; Burstow, Stockley

Here’s what Jackson had to say about Sunderland and the last time the teams met back in October.

“The game at their place is something we have spoken about a lot this week.

“It’s a performance that we look back on and think that we did some really good things there. Obviously, many things have changed since then, we have a few players out and they have had a change of manager.

“We’ll be looking back at the game thinking, this is what we did last time, can we go there and challenge and do it again.”

Despite Charltnon’s poor run of form, former Sunderland midfielder Geoge Dobson has impressed for the Addicks since moving to The Valley in the summer.

The 24-year-old looks set to be named the club’s player of the season after becoming a key part of Jackson’s team.

Former Sunderland defender Adam Matthews is also in line to face his former club, despite leaving the field with concussion against Sheffield Wednesday last weekend. The club have stated that all the relevant protocols have been followed.

Top scorer Jayden Stockley is available again following an injury setback.

Charlton beat Sunderland 1-0 back in October during Johnnie Jackson’s first game as caretaker boss, before he was appointed permanently.

But despite Jackson’s impressive start, Charlton have dropped to 16th in the table following five straight defeats.

To find out more, we caught up with BBC London reporter Louis Mendez to get the inside track.

Here’s what he said about Charlton’s style of play under Jackson: “He plays a 3-5-2 which we saw immediately when we came up to Sunderland and it worked really well for those first nine games or so. We also won three in a row towards the end of January.

“That’s the system he likes and that relies heavily on the wing-backs, but a lot of people feel we perhaps don’t have the right players to play wing-back at the moment which is probably fair.

“It also relies on the midfield pushing forward and over the last few weeks I feel they have been pretty disappointing in that.

“With the lack of strikers it means we haven’t really been able to keep the ball up that end of the field and take the pressure off the defence.”

Here’s what the Black Cats boss had to say about today’s opponents.

“They’ve got good players, a good squadI think they’ve had some key injuries at key times but some of those look to be coming back now.

“I’ve seen a fair few of their games and they’ve been very competitive, key moments have maybe gone against them at certain times, particularly recently.

“We need to make sure we’re really focused. We’ve got to try and build momentum, we don’t want to ruin our result at Wigan by not performing in this one.

“We understand the importance of this game. “

Let’s start with the Sunderland team news.

Callum Doyle is available again after missing last week’s trip to WIgan with a minor hip injury.

Fellow centre-back Danny Batth may also be available again following an ankle issue, though Neil did say there are ‘a couple of niggles’ in the squad.

Long-term absentees Nathan Broadhead, Luke O’Nien and Aiden McGeady have all been back playing some part in training over the last week but Neil has said he will not rush any players back before they are fully fit.

Hello and welcome to our SAFC live blog!

Following last weekend’s 3-0 win at Wigan, Alex Neil’s side need to build on the result at the DW Stadium with just 11 league games remaining.

Today the Black Cats face what looks like another tricky away trip, yet opponents Charlton have lost their last five matches.

We’ll have all the build-up ahead of the game, as well as in-game analysis and post-match reaction.

Stick around and refresh the page for live updates.