Tony Mowbray says his changes against Cardiff were made in a bid to avoid injuries to key players. The Sunderland boss admitted after yesterday's defeat that his decision to rest experienced men such as Corry Evans and Alex Pritchard 'did not help the team', with the young midfield pairing of 20-year-old Dan Neil and 19-year-old Abdoullah Ba - the latter making his first start in English football - struggling against the Bluebirds.
Sunderland only really improved and began to get a grip on the game in the final half-hour, by which time Mowbray had brought on Evans and Pritchard. But when asked about the reasoning behind his decision to rotate his squad, Mowbray said it was less a case of players suffering from fatigue, and more about the desire to avoid the kind of injuries that fatigue can bring.
"Less fatigue, more an injury caused by fatigue," said Mowbray. "We do wellness things and every day players get gauged on where they are, how they feel, what levels of fatigue they've got - red, amber, and green.
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"We've got a lot of players who are in danger of breaking down. That's what the science tells us, not just me with my eye saying 'he looks a bit tired today'.
"It's to do with how they're sleeping, what they're eating, how much fluid they are taking on board, how much training and the intensity of it, it all adds up. You pick players and you have to trust them, that's why you have a squad rather than just 11, 12 or 13 footballers - you have 20 footballers and you have to trust all of them.
"I thought we were better in the second half. I know we lost a goal early and maybe they [Cardiff] went into defensive mode, but we finished the last half-hour or so on the front foot trying to score a goal and yet didn't manage to find it."
Sunderland had won their previous game 2-0 at Huddersfield Town in midweek, and were bidding to win back-to-back games in the Championship for the first time this season - and, given that they failed to win two in a row in their last campaign in the second tier in 2017-18, it would be the first time since May 2007 since they achieved that feat. Mowbray said: "It is tough to win back-to-back games unless you have real top players.
"We have a team that is still. not being put together, but it played in a different league last year. We are striving for consistency, we've sat here lots of times and said the first half was really great, or the second half was much better. There's a consistency issue, and we have to find the answers to show more in our performance level across the 90 minutes.
"We are consistently inconsistent at the moment."
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