Advantage Sunderland after Hume seals narrow first-leg win against Luton

For a long time, it has felt as though no matter what Sunderland did, it would all go wrong. Relegations, defeats at Wembley, misfortune with average points, pratfall after pratfall. “Why,” as one tearful fan filmed for the Sunderland Til I Die documentary asked as she left the 2019 playoff final defeat to Charlton, “can it never be us?” Except suddenly it looks as though it might be. There’s still the second leg to go at Luton, even before another playoff final, but the rise that began with victory over Wycombe at Wembley last year looks as though, unexpectedly and almost despite themselves, it could keep on going.

There is a curious sense that Sunderland got into the playoffs by mistake. They came up from League One through the playoffs last season, have had by far the youngest starting lineup in the Championship and have been missing key central defenders and centre-backs most of the season, as well as Corry Evans, their captain and only deep-lying midfielder of any real experience. They even failed to win 10 of their final 15 games of the season, a run in which they fell as low as 12th before inexplicably rising back to sixth, thanks to Millwall tossing away a 3-1 half-time lead on the final day.

So bad are their injury problems, that they ended up starting with a back-three comprising a converted winger, a converted full-back and Luke O’Nien, who has played pretty much everywhere with the same baby-faced ruggedness, but remains 5ft 9in, while the two wing-backs, Jack Clarke and Patrick Roberts, are very clearly wingers. At their best Sunderland can produce some sumptuous football, but you would fear for them in the air against a Lilliput XI.

Dion Charles denied Barnsley a vital first-leg advantage with a second-half