Sunday 8th March 2026
Port Vale v Sunderland
FA Cup Fifth Round
Vale Park – Kick-Off: 13:30
Tickets & Match Coverage
Tickets: Tickets are sold out.
TV/Stream: Full live match coverage is available via TNT Sports.
Radio: Full live match commentary available via BBC Radio Newcastle (not online)
Don’t forget to follow the blow-by-blow account of the game on the Roker Report Twitter feed (@RokerReport) and check out the player ratings after the full-time whistle at www.RokerReport.sbnation.com!
The build-up…
I feel like we’ve just experienced something that Arsenal fans went through during the late-Arsène Wenger era.
Those were of course the days when there would be much rejoicing at qualifying for the Champions League, but there was an element of not really knowing how much to be openly happy about it.
Following our brilliant victory at Elland Road – where we out-dirtied dirty Leeds – we finally landed on the magical 40-point mark.
It was the target mentioned by the manager and players in the summer, it was the target re-emphasised by the club time and time again when we were flying in the early stages of the season, and it was restated once again as the target to remind fans what this season was about when it wasn’t going so well over the last couple of months.
So, job done. Well, that’s true in terms of the Premier League ambition for this season – although being four points behind seventh-placed Brentford will no doubt mean we’ll have new conversations on that front – but what we maybe didn’t think about in the summer was a potential cup run.
Today takes us to Port Vale for only the second time this century, and they are the second side we’ve taken on in this run in the FA Cup that we took on back in 1992 on our way to the final – Oxford United being the other.
Win today and it’s one game away from a trip to Wembley. It starts to feel serious, and with the 40-point achievement ticked off, the debate around resting players for this one seems a bit pointless on the face of it. If players are struggling for fitness there is of course an argument, but surely no fully fit player would be rested for today’s game?! Let’s wait for the team sheets in a few hours.
Whatever happened to having Port Vale in our Sunderland supporting lives?! I began following the Lads around the time when I knew what was happening in the world in the late 1980s, and up to that point we’d drawn Port Vale in the FA Cup in 1936 and 1962 and that was it – although both went to replays.
From 1987, when we dropped to the Third Division, we played them every year bar one between 1987 and 1998 (the odd year we didn’t was 1993 if anyone wants the answer to a rubbish quiz question). So from my young childhood, through to finishing my school years, we would play Port Vale on an annual basis.
This century, we didn’t play today’s hosts until 2018, and that was in the first round of the FA Cup – yes, it was only a few years ago we required a couple of wins to reach the point when the top-flight sides join the party. Two years later in 2021, we met in the pizza/paint (delete as applicable) cup and later in the same year we’d meet again in the League Cup (see below as it was the last meeting between the two sides and incidentally, it was Alex Pritchard’s debut).
Point is, they’ve been bouncing around the bottom two divisions of the Football League since being relegated from the second tier back in 2000. They now look like a yo-yo club that switches between League One and League Two.
They currently sit ten points adrift of safety at the foot of League One and if it continues like this they will have only had one season in the last five (including this one) where they haven’t either been relegated or promoted. But it’s the first time they’ve reached this stage of the FA Cup since 1988, and if you saw their pitch during the Bristol City game, they have a potential leveller right there.
We need to be on our guard – the FA Cup has seen much bigger upsets than today would be.
The betting…
The bookies have the Lads at 4/9 to win the game, while Port Vale are priced at 5/1, and the draw is 17/5.
Head to head… at Vale Park
(All competitions)
- Sunderland wins: 5
- Draws: 3
- Port Vale wins: 3
- Sunderland goals: 15
- Port Vale goals: 15
Last time we met… at Vale Park
Tuesday 10th August 2021
League Cup – First Round
Port Vale 1-2 Sunderland
[Proctor 67’ – Hawkes 40’, O’Brien (pen) 50’]
Sunderland: Patterson, Younger, Flanagan, Wright, Taylor (Doyle), Neil, O’Nien, Diamond (McGeady), Pritchard (Grigg), Hawkes, O’Brien Substitutes not used: Burge, Evans, Gooch, Stewart
Port Vale: Stone, Worrall, Benning, Smith, Legge, Jones (Cass), Garrity, Walker (Amoo), Wilson (Bailey), Proctor, Pett Substitutes not used: Gibbons, Johnson, Martin, Hurst
Attendance: 3,267
Prediction…
Port Vale 0-2 Sunderland
I’m thinking it’s going to be scrappy, it’s not going to be pretty to watch, but it will end up being pretty comfortable(ish) and a professional performance to boot.
