Batth made a splash on Cats debut, says boss Johnson

LEE Johnson praised ‘brilliant’ debutant Danny Batth after he helped Sunderland earn a hard-fought victory over Portsmouth at the Stadium of Light.

Centre-back Batth joined the Black Cats from Stoke City in midweek, and he made an immediate impact as Sunderland kept a clean sheet in a 1-0 win against Pompey that saw them move back into the automatic promotion slots.

Johnson said Batth added extra physicality to his side, which is a quality they had lacked at times in the first half of the campaign.

“It was a very hard-earned win,” said Johnson. “You can see that the pitch is not conducive to playing tiki-taka football, and it demonstrates the reasoning behind bringing in the likes of Danny Batth and I thought we were extremely solid today.

“We need to win all types of games and that is something I recognised early on in the season but I don’t think we addressed it early enough.

“The signing of Danny has certainly addressed that and has given us that dominant first-ball winner. I thought he was brilliant. He has that physicality and he takes the emphasis of Flanno [Tom Flanagan] having to be physical and the dominant one.

“He’s not just a brute. You saw today that he can play. There’s not much to criticise in his performance today.”

Portsmouth had the better of the opening half-hour but were unable to capitalise, and Sunderland, who were without defender Bailey Wright and midfielder Alex Pritchard, gradually took control with Elliot Embleton scoring the decisive goal.

“We had two or three chances, but it definitely wasn’t a classic,” admitted Johnson. “When you look at how many saves that Hoff [goalkeeper Thorben Hoffmann] has had to make, I can’t think of one of any note.