The Blues will look to finish the campaign on a high at the Stadium of Light, with three points against the Black Cats potentially securing us European football for next season too.

McFarlane spoke to the media at Cobham for one final time this term on Friday afternoon, and confirmed that he’s hopeful to have both Levi Colwill and Joao Pedro back in contention for the trip to Wearside, while skipper Reece James is also fine to feature having been rested in midweek against Tottenham.

‘Joao and Levi both trained today and that’s really promising,’ McFarlane stated ahead of Sunday’s game.

‘We have another day of training tomorrow, so we will see how they are after that but we’re hopeful they’ll both be fit for Sunday.’

Our interim head coach also confirmed that the reason James missed the win over Tottenham in midweek was purely because he was being rested, and that the defender – who was named in the England squad for the upcoming World Cup – is fine to face Sunderland.

‘Reece trained today and we’ll play it day by day with him,’ McFarlane said of our captain.

‘He’s fit and in a good condition but we know that we’ve had to manage Reece correctly over the last few games.

‘He obviously played a lot of minutes in the [FA Cup] final, which was a tough game against a really good side so it was going to take a lot out of him, so we didn’t want to risk him on Tuesday.

‘We felt like we had enough to see the game out, which proved to be correct, and we’re hoping to have Reece available on Sunday.’