KIERAN RICHARDSON has endured the trauma of a relegation battle in the past and emerged with his reputation firmly intact while on loan at West Brom.

This season he is having to face up to a similar fight, although given that this is only his first season into a permanent contract at Sunderland, Richardson knows the importance of preserving top-flight status; not just on a personal front but for the whole of Wearside.

The 23-year-old, however, has completely different feelings this time around. Towards the end of the 2004-05 season, Richardson experienced what it was like to be a hero after helping the Baggies avoid relegation on the final day.

But, reflecting on the atmosphere around The Hawthorns at that stage, the £5m buy from Manchester United is confident that Sunderland will not have to endure such a nail-biting end to this season.

At this stage, given how Sunderland occupy the final relegation place, few will agree with him. Richardson suggests, though, that the visit of Portsmouth tomorrow offers the perfect opportunity to prove people wrong.

"In these times you've got to stick together," he said. "Team spirit is the key really. When I was at West Brom that was the key for us, great team spirit, everyone stuck together.

"We need that here. We need to get behind each other and believe in each other then we'll have no problem because we've got the quality here.

"It's never even come into my mind that we're going down, it's more thinking about the next game and winning it for Sunderland.

I'm not thinking, Oh, in a few months' time we're going down'. We're just taking every game at a time and we strongly believe in every game we can get results and if we don't get results we're very disappointed."

Richardson spent the best part of four months out with a stress fracture of his back, which he had to face up to just three matches into his Sunderland career.

And prior to last weekend's defeat to Wigan in the FA Cup, the left-midfielder had started to turn in the type of display being expected of him from the fans following his switch from Old Trafford.

His return has coincided at a time when there appears to be slightly more pressure being heaped on manager Roy Keane's shoulders, which was hardly helped by comments attributed to full-back Clive Clarke this week.

Full-back Clarke suggested that Keane did little to help morale in the dressing room because he walks around booting chairs and tables.

Richardson said: "Having been out for a long time you forget how the gaffer reacts but he reacted in a positive way and gave us some good feedback.

"He wasn't happy at all about the defeat to Wigan but what do you expect when we've gone out of the FA Cup?''