Sunderland welcome Chelsea to the Stadium of Light on Sunday for their 2025\/26 Premier League season finale.<\/p>\n
Following their 2-1 victory at Stamford Bridge in October, the Black Cats are aiming to complete a league double over the Blues for the first time since 2000\/01.<\/p>\n
Match preview <\/h2>\n
Sunderland could crown their impressive return to the Premier League by sealing European qualification for the first time in 53 years.<\/p>\n
They head into the game one point behind Chelsea and a potential Europa Conference League play-off spot.<\/p>\n
However, the best-case scenario for Sunderland is a seventh-place finish, which would secure Europa League qualification.<\/p>\n
Chelsea ended their seven-game winless run in the Premier League with a 2-1 victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Calum McFarlane\u2019s side currently occupy the Europa Conference League qualificaqtion spot, a competition they won in the 2024\/25 season under Enzo Maresca.<\/p>\n
Chelsea will take encouragement from the fact that they have lost just two of their last 14 final league matches (W9, D3) heading into this contest.<\/p>\n
They have also lost just one of their last 13 Premier League away games against Sunderland (W10, D2).<\/p>\n
Team news<\/h2>\n
Sunderland\u2019s Omar Alderete was forced off with an injury last time out against Everton and will be assessed before Sunday.<\/p>\n
They will be without Romaine Mundle, Bertrand Traore and Simon Moore due to injuries, while Dan Ballard will serve the final match of a three-match suspension.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s Joao Pedro missed Tuesday\u2019s win over Spurs with a knock, but is back in contention. Reece James and Levi Colwill could also feature.<\/p>\n
![\"Premier](\"https:\/\/footballtoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Chelsea_Liverpool-300x200.jpg\")
<\/div>\nEstevao Willian and Jamie Gittens will miss the game.<\/p>\n
Predicted line-ups <\/h2>\n
Sunderland (4-2-3-1)<\/strong>: Roefs, Geertruida, Mukiele, O’Nien, Mandava, Xhaka, Sadiki, Hume, Le Fee, Angulo, Brobbey.<\/p>\n Chelsea (4-2-3-1)<\/strong>: Sanchez, Gusto, Chalobah, Colwill, Cucurella, James, Caicedo, Fernandez, Neto, Palmer, Joao Pedro.<\/p>\n Prediction: Sunderland 1-2 Chelsea<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sunderland welcome Chelsea to the Stadium of Light on Sunday for their 2025\/26 Premier League…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}