The major injury blow that could harm Leeds United - and that Sunderland narrowly avoided

I believe they call it a “heart in mouth” moment.

With Sunderland’s defensive options already decidedly thin, and with no concrete indication that the club are actively looking to recruit in that area of the pitch this January, the last thing anybody of a red and white persuasion would have wanted to see during Friday night’s dramatic 0-0 draw with Burnley was Chris Mepham limp out of the fray clutching his hamstring.

Cue a nervous wait and an increasingly large pile of chewed fingernails on Wearside. Thankfully, by Monday lunchtime, Regis Le Bris, in that calming way of his, had swooped in to allay Mackem fears. “Chris is feeling good,” he said. “He trained this morning and there was no problem.”

It was an update awash with relief, not just because of Sunderland’s threadbare roster at the back, but also because of how consistently brilliant the Welshman has been since arriving on loan from Bournemouth over the summer. Mepham has barely put a foot wrong in recent months, and his performances - usually alongside Luke O’Nien, but occasionally next to Dan Ballard - have helped the Black Cats to a paltry, impressive tally of just 22 goals conceded in 28 Championship outings.

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Indeed, Mepham has been so good that stats database Wyscout rank him as the ninth-highest performing centre-back in the second tier this season - although the persistent naysayers would perhaps be wise to note that a certain aforementioned O’Nien sits three whole places above his accomplice in the ratings. Nevertheless, it is a ringing endorsement of how well Mepham has settled on Wearside, and how valuable he has become to Le Bris’ team in such a relatively brief span of time.

Which brings us to the man at the top of Wyscout’s list. According to the number-crunchers, the very best centre-back in the Championship so far this season is Leeds United’s Pascal Struijk. The Dutchman has featured 24 times in a back line that has conceded even fewer goals than Sunderland, and has even chipped in with three strikes of his own at the other end too.

Now, as fate would have it, Struijk, like Mepham, also had his weekend derailed somewhat by an apparent hamstring issue. Unlike his Sunderland counterpart, however, the 25-year-old was not back in training come Monday afternoon.

According to Leeds boss Daniel Farke, speaking after a victory over Sheffield Wednesday, the prognosis for his star man is still not overtly clear, but at the very least, there is an expectation that he will be absent for a minimum of three weeks. If the relevant scans come back in a bad way, however, that stint on the sidelines could stretch into several months.

For Leeds, that would be grave news, especially given how well Struijk has aided their promotion bid this season. Granted, they can console themselves knowing that they also have the second-best defender in the division, according to Wyscout, in the form of Joe Rodon, but there is no way that a side can lose a player of Struijk’s quality for any prolonged period of time and not feel it to be a significant blow.

To that end, Sunderland should perhaps count themselves lucky. But for fine margins, they too could have been facing up to the prospect of an extended spell without a difference-making centre-back in their starting XI. As it happens, they can instead take solace in the fact that their own defensive rock, Mepham, is perfectly fine - and one of the best the Championship has to offer.