Correlation FC

Brentford vs Sunderland, preview

For the third (and final) time this season, Brentford welcomes a newly promoted team to the Gtech Community Stadium. Sunderland have surprised many with a very impressive 2025-26 Premier League season. Both teams are missing key players who are away at AFCON, but both have managed well in recent games.

Recent history

The Bees and the Black Cats don't have a lot of recent history beyond the 2-1 defeat that the Bees suffered at the Stadium of Light back in August. Igor Thiago scored a headed goal in the 77th minute, but Sunderland fought back with two late goals to take the win. Prior to that, the teams hadn't played each other since 2018.

Recent form

Sunderland have drawn their last four games in a row, scoring only a pair of goals in that stretch. They've kept three clean sheets in their last five. The Bees are undefeated in their last five league games, twice scoring four goals and twice keeping clean sheets.

Opta Power Rankings (as of 7th January 2026)

Red and white stripes (again)

In the build-up to Brentford's match at Sunderland in August, we wrote about what has happened when Brentford plays against other teams who wear red and white stripes. Since 2000, the Bees have only won 6 of 24 away matches when the home team wears red and white stripes.

As promised, now that we've reached the return fixture, we'll look at how the Bees have done at home against opponents who normally wear red and white stripes. The good news is that the Bees have done very well in this scenario.

We can see that the Bees have won 13 of 25 matches (52%) and picked up points an impressive 80% of the time.