Parky’s Presser: Here’s EVERYTHING the Sunderland gaffer said today ahead of the Gillingham game

On new injury news...

Denver Hume has got a virus, so he’s a doubt, so we’ll just wait to see how he is - probably similar to what Duncan had last week, and we’ll just see how he is close to the kick off.

On long-term injuries...

Lynden has been out running today, so touch wood that’s him making progress.

Charlie has made good progress the last couple of days, the swelling has gone out of his ankle - Brandy’s a lot happier so hopefully we’ll get him going next week in terms of out on the grass running.

Embo is another three months away, so he’s a long term injury.

Burgey has trained some of the week, and we’ll assess him tomorrow and see how he’s got through today - he did feel it a little bit at the end of the session, so we’ll just make a decision whether we’re going to put him in the squad tomorrow.

Photo by Ian Horrocks/Sunderland AFC via Getty Images

On the reaction to losing on Tuesday...

We’ve moved on quickly to kind of reset our performance levels, and done a bit of video work with the lads this morning about what we need to do.

It’s always frustrating to lose a game but I think a lot of it was that I picked a team which maybe didn’t have the right balance in it to give everybody a game - the balance in the team wasn’t right.

Of course, individuals can do more within that, but sometimes I’m at the stage where I need to look at as many players as quickly as possible, and the structure of the team wasn’t quite what I would normally like.

On cancelling the Bristol Rovers game...

It was purely what weve been saying with the injuries we’ve got, the three internationals called up, Burgey - we’re not quite sure how that muscle’s going to react, so I think it was quite a simple decision really.

As much as we don’t want a fixture pile-up, equally we didn’t want to go into a game with a weakened team.

I think it gives us the opportunity to get those injured players closer to being fit.

Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group via Getty Images

On what to expect from a Steve Evans side...

Steve’s sides are always very well organised, very committed, and we’ve got to be ready for that. They’ve got some good players, obviously, but we’ve got to be strong enough to compete with what they’re going to throw at us, and also good enough on the ball to play like we did in periods of the Southend game and for the majority of the Tranmere game.

That’s what we’ve been speaking to the lads [about] and what we’ve been going through on the training pitch this morning.

The FA Cup for me is still a great competition, still has a special feel about FA Cup weekend, whether it’s the first round or the third round when Sunderland used to historically enter the competition, and the club’s got history in the FA Cup, and we want to represent the club properly tomorrow.

On his best FA Cup memories as a manager...

Beating Chelsea 4-2 was the biggest win in my career as a manager, and the kind of lift that gave everybody at Bradford was incredible.