Dan Neil has shared his love for Sunderland teammate Pierre Ekwah.
Speaking to Chronicle Live, Dan Neil tipped the Frenchman to become a ‘top’ midfielder following a brilliant start to the campaign.
Pierre Ekwah joined Sunderland from West Ham in January 2023 and quickly became a regular under Tony Mowbray.
The 21-year-old continued his partnership with Neil in midfield this term and was attracting plenty of attention with his superb performance against Southampton, which saw him score his first two goals for the club.
Ekwah then picked up an unfortunate injury and spent a month on the sidelines, before putting on another stellar display in the win over Norwich City at the weekend.
The midfielder has been one of Sunderland’s best players since he arrived in January and was the subject of interest from Stuttgart in the summer.
Neil has recognised the quality of his teammate and has predicted a big future for him.
“Yeah he’s brilliant. He’s got all the attributes to be a top, top midfielder,” Neil said.
“Left foot, big, powerful, can strike a ball, scores from the edge of the box like we’ve seen this season. The dead leg kind of came for a bad time for him because he was finding his rhythm.
“He looks back up to speed and looked really, really good on Saturday. I love playing in midfield with him because he’s always looking to fire balls through the lines and if I’m not on he’ll hit the switch and it’s a chance for me to get in the box.
“We are developing a good partnership, me, him and Jobe [Bellingham] and we just need to keep going.”
How important are Pierre Ekwah, Dan Neil and Jobe?
This midfield definitely have a few creases they need to iron out, but we have three extremely promising players on our hands.
Jobe and Dan Neil both have the quality to eventually play for the England national team, while Pierre Ekwah is definitely capable of making it into the Premier League – hopefully with us.
They are all very young but, if we can keep hold of them, we could be sorted for years to come in the middle of the park.
Our only concern is the squad depth, because as soon as one player gets injured or banned, it looks a lot weaker. That was shown when Ekwah was on the treatment table and Neil later picked up a red card against Middlesbrough.