A terrific Tees-Wear derby illuminated by the imagination and sweet passing incision of Sunderland’s Enzo Le Fée and Middlesbrough’s Hayden Hackney ended with Régis Le Bris’s visitors only three points off an automatic promotion place. While Sunderland celebrated quite a comeback, Boro’s manager, Michael Carrick, looked almost close to tears after Le Fée glided beyond Luke Ayling and a mortified Ryan Giles diverted the Frenchman’s late cross into his own net.

Not that a seventh-placed Boro side well capable of ending up in the playoffs should despair – and particularly not after a decent transfer window. Just before kick-off Middlesbrough’s new loan signing from Sevilla, Kelechi Iheanacho ambled on to the pitch and waved to his new public before being hugged by Carrick. Boro’s manager must have wished he had signed the former Leicester striker in time to play here but at least the England Under-21 winger Samuel Iling-Junior arrived on Teesside in time to start his loan from Aston Villa on the home bench.

He and Iheanacho watched Marcus Forss, Carrick’s centre-forward for the night, swiftly draw a fabulous save from Anthony Patterson after meeting Ayling’s cross with a fine header. After failing to heed that warning Sunderland soon found themselves behind when Hackney’s beautifully calibrated, defence-bisecting, through pass prefaced Delano Burgzorg accelerating clear. All that remained was for Burgzorg to send a right-foot shot whizzing low, and unerringly, beyond the visiting keeper’s reach after proving impervious to Luke O’Nien’s desperate last-ditch tug on his shirt.

If it was easy to see why Boro rejected a £10m bid from Porto for Hackney /on Monday, the 2,200 Sunderland fans who had made the 30-mile trip down the A19 from Wearside were distinctly unimpressed with their side’s defending in the face of Boro’s pace suffused attacking. Although Mark Travers needed to make a couple of saves to deny Chris Mepham and Enzo Le Fée, it was pretty much all Boro. Le Fée, on loan from Roma, is extremely talented but displayed a certain reluctance to track back from his station on the left of Régis Le Bris’s frontline.

Le Bris had cause to be grateful that Forss spurned an excellent opportunity to double his team’s lead after collecting another defence-confounding pass from Hackney. On this evidence the latter should be rather insulted by the modesty of Porto’s offer. It would prove a costly miss as Dan Neil quickly equalised. The midfielder has caught the eye of Premier League clubs in recent months and demonstrated precisely why when he dispossessed Burgzorg before powering in a shot from just outside the area.

Sign up to Football Daily. Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football. after newsletter promotion. Admittedly there was a little luck involved – the ball took a significant deflection off George Edmundson’s chest, leaving Travers wrong-footed – but, not for the first time this season, Sunderland had demonstrated their resilience under pressure. Almost incrementally Le Bris’s side had worked their way back into the game and, suddenly, a previously omnipotent Boro looked desperate to slow things down. At this juncture Carrick was presumably relieved the 19-year-old Liverpool forward Jayden Danns had not signed his loan deal with the Wearsiders early enough to be involved here.

His team had initially been all kaleidoscopic positional interchanging and a blur of intelligent passing and movement but by half-time they seemed almost cowed by Neil, Jobe Bellingham, Chris Rigg, Le Fée and co. Once the second half was underway it appeared Sunderland had fathomed out a way to beat Carrick’s hitherto super efficient press. The home manager’s worst fears were realised when Wilson Isidor vindicated Le Bris’s decision to turn his loan from Zenit St Petersburg into a formal transfer by giving Sunderland the lead.