The Sunderland player who can still play significant role this season after Swansea City cameo

Look, the bar wasn’t exactly up in the stratosphere, but there is an argument to be made for his 14-minute cameo against Swansea City at the weekend being Salis Abdul Samed’s most promising display in a Sunderland shirt so far.

Admittedly, the 25-year-old could do little to turn the tide of a wholly frustrating 1-0 defeat, and we are still some way off seeing the full potential of a player who was competing in the Champions League as recently as last season, but there was a greater edge to the Ghanaian on Saturday afternoon - a more prominent, tangible urgency and an improved sense of mobility in the middle of the park.

The stats experts would seemingly agree as well. According to Whoscored, Samed recorded his highest match rating in English football to date against Swansea, eclipsing his previous best, which apparently came during the 2-2 draw with Plymouth Argyle back in January, by some distance.

And it is not particularly difficult to see why. The loanee completed 22 out of his 24 attempted passes at the weekend at a success rate of 92%, won three out of his four contested duels, recovered the ball three times (including twice in the opposition half), made an interception, and all things considered was successful in 26 of his 31 attempted actions, according to stats database Wyscout.

Again, a lot of those things are little more than the kind of basic fundamentals that you would expect a player of Samed’s apparent pedigree to rattle through on auto-pilot, but for large parts of his stuttering stint on Wearside, he simply hasn’t. He may have been on the pitch for less than a quarter of an hour, but Saturday was arguably the first time that Sunderland fans were afforded the tiniest glimpse of the player he could be.

And that’s important, not because there is much hope of Samed suddenly rising like a phoenix from the ashes of his injury-induced malaise to drag the Black Cats back into the Premier League, but because his presence should, theoretically, free up Regis Le Bris to rest and rotate his preferred midfield options a little more readily heading into the nervy gauntlet of a play-off tilt. With Samed around, there is no reason why the head coach can’t consider taking the evidently-sapped Dan Neil out of the team for a game or two between now and the end of the regular campaign, during which his side have little more to contest than four glorified dead rubbers.

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Come May, when the stakes amp up once more and Wembley beckons teasingly, who is to say how significant a rejuvenated Neil could be to Sunderland’s promotion hopes, or, for that matter, a revitalised Jobe Bellingham or a less overwrought Chris Rigg? In one capacity or another, Samed’s return should help to provide Le Bris with those resources, as was always the intention when he was first parachuted in from RC Lens.

The reality, of course, is that Samed has been largely hamstrung this season, and his time in the North East has consequently veered between the mythical and the tragicomic more often than not. But with four fixtures left, and with the first, tentative green shoots of his influence perhaps starting to poke through, there is still time for him to play his part in Sunderland’s campaign - even if it is indirectly.

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