SUNDERLAND will not be appealing Glenn Loovens’ red card from Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Portsmouth because the centre-half has sustained an injury that would rule him out of the Boxing Day home game with Bradford City anyway.

Loovens was dismissed when he fouled Oli Hawkins in the second half of Saturday’s game at Fratton Park, and Sunderland boss Jack Ross initially suggested he would look to have the red card overturned as the incident fell under the ‘double jeopardy’ rule whereby the Black Cats received a double punishment of a penalty and a red card.

Having discussed the dismissal with the match officials, Ross now concedes Loovens’ departure fell into a grey area, but the defender’s injury situation means an appeal to the FA’s disciplinary committee would be an empty gesture regardless of the result.

Loovens is set to miss the next couple of weeks after injuring himself as he made his weekend tackle, with his absence adding to Sunderland’s mounting list of problems.

Ross said: “Glenn actually injured himself in the challenge and will be out for a couple of weeks. So that means an appeal really becomes an irrelevance.

“I had a good conversation with the match officials after the game, a fairly sensible conservation, and I do think it’s one of those that falls into a little bit of a grey area. The changes to the rules are clear in some respect, but probably the challenge falls in between somewhere.

“I don’t think Glenn makes a clear attempt to win the ball, but I don’t think he makes a clear attempt to stop the player reaching the ball either. I think it’s more of a coming together. I can understand why it was given, and I also the match official understands why there was a case for it not being a red card. It’s irrelevant. It was given as a red card and we had to face the consequences of that.”

Adam Matthews remains a doubt for Boxing Day after he was forced to pull out of the Portsmouth game at a late stage with a calf injury, but Ross is hoping Tom Flanagan will be passed fit to return to action.

He said: “Tom Flanagan has missed the last couple of games, but we’re hopeful he might be available. As we speak now, still early on Christmas Eve, we still have to see how he reacts, but he was on the training pitch yesterday.

“He’ll train again today, but we’ll just have to wait and see. There’s quite a few players that fall into that category for us at the moment – not ruled out, but not certain that they’ll be available. Today and tomorrow when we train, we’ll ascertain that.”

Charlie Wyke is set to return to the squad for the first time since mid-September, and Ross is also confident Chris Maguire will be available for a Boxing Day game that will be played in front of a crowd of more than 40,000 at the Stadium of Light.

He said: “Chris is fully fit now. He was on the bench on Saturday, but he comes very much into our thoughts for Wednesday.”