Nervy Sunderland hold off 10-man Portsmouth thanks to Isidor’s early goal

Before kick-off Portsmouth’s manager, John Mousinho, suggested all the pressure would be on Sunderland, leaving his players free to relax, improvise and unlock their inner creativity.

It did not quite work out like that but, in one sense, Mousinho was correct. Régis Le Bris’s players frequently looked so nervous and/or fatigued that they not merely missed a litany of chances but became so indecisive in possession that a Portsmouth side reduced to 10 men by Marlon Pack’s second half sending-off could conceivably have eased their relegation worries by snatching a late point.

Instead Wilson Isidor’s early goal proved just sufficient to keep Sunderland on course for the return to the Premier League that few predicted when the little-known Le Bris arrived from Brittany in June.

If half the Championship still retains feasible hopes of securing promotion through the playoffs, the race for automatic promotion looks slightly less opaque. With only three points separating the top four but nine dividing Le Bris’s fourth-placed side from fifth-placed Middlesbrough, Leeds, Burnley, Sheffield United and Sunderland are locked into an engrossing struggle to finish first or second.

Perhaps taking Mousinho’s “relax’ message too literally Portsmouth turned so ultra laid-back they had no answer to a slick seventh-minute Sunderland counterattack that concluded with Eliezer Mayenda’s pass prefacing Wilson Isidor placing a shot beyond Nicolas Schmid.

If Schmid perhaps beat himself up for having strayed way too far off his line, Le Bris’s decision to persist with the new-look 4-4-2 formation that proved the platform for a New Year’s Day victory against Sheffield United here seemed vindicated. Even better, Isidor’s eighth goal of the season suggested that maybe the acquisition of a new centre-forward is maybe not quite the pressing January priority it once appeared.

Referee Thomas Bramall shows a red card to Portsmouth's Marlon Pack in the second half at the Stadium of Light. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Although the snow that blanketed much of the north-east on Sunday morning had, in this part of Wearside at least, being replaced by heavy rain, temperatures were far too close to freezing point for comfort and keeping warm remained the imperative for everyone inside the Stadium of Light.

An unusually high number of empty red plastic seats and unexpectedly low crowd of 39,846 reflected the difficulty supporters from outlying areas faced in getting to Sunderland. Hats off then to the small band of Portsmouth fans who completed the arduous, and expensive, 340-mile road trip north.

Others had taken three trains to be here while some flew to Newcastle from Southampton airport but all must have feared the worst when Ryler Towler cleared a Patrick Roberts shot off the line and then Schmid redeemed himself by saving superbly to deny Adil Aouchiche.

Despite Josh Murphy – the twin brother of Newcastle’s Jacob Murphy – dodging Dan Neil and sending a shot swerving and dipping its way just over Anthony Patterson’s bar, Portsmouth spent much of the afternoon riding their defensive luck.

Before half-time alone Mousinho’s team variously escaped an albeit slightly ambitious appeal for a penalty when Towler felled Mayenda in the area, saw Isidor have a second goal disallowed for a tight offside and his fellow forward Mayenda miss a sitter.

No matter; Isidor, a French striker on loan from Zenit St Petersburg, seemed to be relishing that recently established attacking partnership with his 19-year-old Spanish sidekick.

Portsmouth’s No 9, Colby Bishop, had been rendered anonymous but, early in the second half, he escaped the game’s margins to head narrowly over the bar. Although the home substitute Dennis Cirkin demanding, forlornly, a penalty following a Zak Swanson challenge, Sunderland seemed to have lost concentration.

As Le Bris’s players began forfeiting possession far too cheaply and turning so tentative and ponderous on the ball they permitted Portsmouth to close them down almost at will. With the home side crying out for someone to speed up their passing and even Patterson becoming unusually indecisive, Mousinho must have sensed real hope of a once unlikely point.

If so, such optimism swiftly proved a cruel chimera. When the referee, Thomas Bramall, sent Marlon Pack packing, showing Portsmouth’s captain a straight red card for grabbing a piece of Isidor’s shirt and dragging down the fast-accelerating forward, the 10-man visitors found themselves seriously up against it.

Given that, without Pack’s intervention – made as he dawdled over a clearance, permitting his opponent to seize possession – Isidor would have been clean through with only Schmid to beat so Portsmouth could have no complaints about that 67th-minute dismissal.

Despite an amalgam of fatigue and nerves almost certainly being to blame Le Bris had cause to criticise his team for a horribly nerve finale that saw a Sunderland side that has developed a nasty habit of conceding late, gamechanging goals wobble alarmingly during an edgy last few minutes as home supporters willed Bramall to blow the final whistle.