Hello from Portugal ...

Craig Gordon blogs exclusively for safc.com during pre-season. Follow how the Black Cats goalkeeper gets on over the next four weeks. 

Hello. 

Training has been fairly hard here in Portugal. We trained twice yesterday and were up early this morning to work. Tonight we play Sporting Lisbon.

We are staying in Albufeira. It's a holiday resort but there will be no free time for us. It's train, recover, game, recover, train ...

But there's no complaints, we expected the regime to be tough, we came here to work, not lie by the pool.

There have been some Sunderland fans watching training which is good to see, and there are a few dotted around the hotel. I'm sure Albufeira is full of Sunderland shirts and we'll see them all at the game tonight.

The temperature is hot here now but over the last couple of days it has been cloudy in the morning when we have trained, so that was perfect - there has been a breeze as well to make it easier.

Craig Gordon blogs for safc.com

There is less running and more ball work in training now, and us keepers are starting to so some specialist stuff. There are three of us here - Marton, Wardy and myself - and we had some good sessions with Raimond van der Gouw, our coach.

We haven't really seen anything but the hotel and the training pitch since we got here. There furthest the lads have ventured is to the local shop to buy a paper, apart from that, we just relax in our rooms, play some cards and watch TV.

Stokesy went out to get his hair cut yesterday - I think that's the furthest anyone has gone!

It can be a bit tedious being stuck in a hotel all the time but I haven't really felt like that. We're training twice a day, at 9am and 5pm, and in between we just relax and recover.

A few of the lads, including myself, have been watching the golf [The Open]. There is a room next to where we eat in the hotel with a big screen and they put it on for us. Eight or nine of the lads are interested in it so we have watched a fair bit.

Yorkie was telling us that David Duval to win it so he was off the mark there. It's tough to pick a winner but I'm going for KJ Choi.

We have a game tonight so I'm going to get some rest. It should be a good work-out. We'll be a bit tired going into it after all the hard work in training but that is what pre-season is all about - getting fit.

Thanks, Craig