The 'lucky' Regis Le Bris comments that hammer home size of potential Sunderland injury blow

It never rains, and so on and so forth. On Saturday lunchtime, Sunderland not only relinquished their unbeaten Championship home record in a dour 1-0 defeat at the hands of relegation-threatened Hull City, further damaging their automatic promotion hopes in the process, but they also lost both Dan Ballard and Enzo Le Fée to apparent hamstring injuries.

Of course, it is worth reiterating there has been no concrete indication as to how severe either complaint is at this stage, only an admission from head coach Regis Le Bris that the Black Cats are facing a nervy wait ahead of Friday’s clash with Sheffield Wednesday.

“Enzo’s problem is probably with his hamstrings,” the Frenchman told a post-match press conference at the Stadium of Light. “We will have to see whether it is serious or not tomorrow. Dan Ballard has a similar issue. It is obviously disappointing, but I think the dynamic of the season is like that.”

For Ballard in particular, the dynamic of the season has indeed been “like that”. The centre-back has been repeatedly hampered by injury, and has spent large swathes of the campaign consigned to a watching brief as Luke O’Nien and loanee Chris Mepham have impressed at the heart of defence.

In recent weeks, however, the 25-year-old has played his way back into Le Bris’ first XI, and Saturday’s meeting with Hull marked his third consecutive start in the league. It is partially for this reason that the timing of his latest setback, assuming it is bad enough to sideline him for any notable period, feels especially cruel on the defender.

And then there are the implications of what Ballard’s absence could mean for Sunderland writ large. Just last week, Le Bris told a press conference how delighted he was to be able to rotate his options in the heart of defence.

He explained: “We are lucky because we have three or four good centre-backs. He [Ballard] was injured and worked very well during the training sessions, even if he wasn’t involved with the first team for a long period. It’s good to have this mentality with three, four players available for the team at their best level, and then after that, we can manage - according to the position, according to the injuries, according to their fitness as well - and we can keep the level as a back four.”

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Without Ballard, should he face a stint out of the side, Sunderland will presumably revert back to a central partnership of O’Nien and Mepham, but will not have the luxury of being able to chop and change as they see fit - especially within matches, when Le Bris has often opted to see out results by bringing on a third centre-back in the latter stages. To that end, Leo Hjelde and Jenson Seelt remain available, but neither feels as readymade for a starting berth as Ballard.

For now, then, Sunderland will wait on a proper diagnosis of the defender’s hamstring complaint over the coming days, but if he is to miss out on a stretch of the Black Cats’ promotion push, make no mistake, it will represent a sizeable and unwelcome blow.

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