TEEMU Tainio will be sentenced the stands tomorrow, but the Sunderland midfielder has urged his team-mates to keep his FA Cup dream alive in his absence.

Tainio, who picked up his fifth booking of the season in last weekend’s defeat to Aston Villa, will serve a one-match suspension when the Black Cats entertain Blackburn in the FA Cup fourth round.

The Finland international will be sorely missed, partly because he has emerged as a key constituent of Sunderland’s first-choice midfield, and partly because he has become something of a cup specialist during his transient career.

He has won the Finnish Cup with FC Haka, the Coupe de France with Auxerre and the Carling Cup with Tottenham Hotspur, but would love to add the most famous cup competition in the world to his collection of medals.

That requires Sunderland to overcome a Blackburn side that ended their League Cup hopes earlier this season, and while Tainio will have no direct involvement tomorrow, he will be desperately hoping his team-mates complete their fourth-round task without him.

“The FA Cup is a massive competition, and everybody in Finland follows it very closely,” said the 29-year-old, whose first FA Cup experiences came as a television viewer in his childhood home of Tornio, a small Finnish town inside the Arctic Circle.

“It’s great to play in it, but it would be even better to win it.

“I wouldn’t be the first player to win the trophy – Sami Hyypia won the FA Cup with Liverpool – but it would be big news in Finland if another Finnish player was to win.

“All the trophies I have won have been in cup competitions, so why not the FA Cup?

“But it’s going to be hard because Blackburn are a good team.

“I’ll be doing everything I can to help the team, and hopefully they’ll make sure I can play in the fifth round.”

While Tainio’s absence will force Ricky Sbragia to shuffle his midfield pack – Grant Leadbitter or Dwight Yorke could get a run-out in the holding role – it is hardly novel in terms of the season as a whole.

The Scandinavian started just five of Sunderland’s first 18 matches under Roy Keane, with a combination of injury and loss of form hampering his attempts to establish himself following a summer move from White Hart Lane.

Things have changed under Sbragia, with the Scotsman appearing to value Tainio’s work-rate and composure under pressure, and having been disappointed at his limited impact in the first half of the season, the Finn is hoping to make more of an impression between now and May.

“You could say it feels a little bit like the start of my Sunderland career now,” he said.

“I had a few injuries at the beginning of the season, then I came back and wasn’t playing.

But I was working hard and now it seems to be paying off.

“I’m playing where I want to play, mainly sat in front of the defence. I don’t just want to sit there, of course, I still want to get involved in an attacking sense as well, but I’m happy to let the other midfielders score the goals.

“We have a good spirit in the dressing room, so whoever plays alongside me in midfield, it’s easy to play with them.”

■ Sunderland’s scheduled home game with Tottenham on February 28 has been postponed because of the London club’s involvement in the Carling Cup final. A new date will be confirmed in due course.