Tony Mowbray is trying to find a workaround after admitting Sunderland's squad is weighted too heavily in favour of technique instead of runners. Despite star striker Ross Stewart being available for a little over a quarter of the campaign due to injury, the Black Cats are the fourth-highest scorers in the Championship with 49 goals in 34 games - but Mowbray feels they would have even more to their name, if he had more players who could run in behind opposing defences and feed off the creativity of technical players such as Amad, Patrick Roberts, Jack Clarke, and Alex Pritchard.
With Stewart ruled out for the remainder of the campaign with an Achilles injury, and Ellis Simms having been recalled by Everton from his loan spell at the turn of the year, Sunderland's sole out-and-out striker is January loan addition Joe Gelhardt. The Leeds United man will lead the line for the rest of the season but he is not a powerful targetman in the same mould as Stewart, and was originally brought to Wearside to complement the Scot rather than to act as a direct replacement.
And that has left Mowbray trying to coach players - including Gelhardt - to go against their natural instincts and become runners, which is a slow process. "It's very different to try to change the natural habits of footballers," said Mowbray.
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"They are footballers because, from being a very small kid, they have done the same thing - they are either a dribbler or a physical player who likes to run without the ball, or a great passer - so it's very difficult to change their habits in a short period of time, because players will do what they do. We have a lot of very technical footballers who like the ball to feet and like to manipulate it and try to slip people in and play one-twos.
"In my mind, we haven't quite got the balance of players that we need to really benefit from the really technical players we've got. If I go back to Ross Stewart, he likes to run in the space behind defences. He wants to be slipped into the gap behind the centre-halves and run and get his body across, hold them off, and smash it in the net.
"At this moment we don't have enough people who want to run without the ball in behind the opposition. We've got loads of players who want to get the ball and dribble and look for someone they want to slip in, but we are just trying to find a way of better exploiting the space in behind defences.
"Once we crack that, we'll start scoring more goals."
For a spell in September and October, Sunderland had to operate without any strikers when both Stewart and Simms were injured. Mowbray had to find a way to get his team to score goals back then, and this current attacking issue is just another hurdle to overcome.
He said: "I said after the [Coventry] game the other day that I felt we didn't have the tools to get the job done. We can all sit here and be disappointed that Ross Stewart isn't fit and Ellis Simms went back to Everton, but all that is history now and we have to get on with what we have got.
"I've always talked about having to find a way to score goals without out-an-out strikers - like when we had no defenders when the centre-halves were out injured we had to find a way to keep clean sheets. We'll keep going, keep working hard, try to impose our style on the opposition - we play the way we play because of the type of players we have got, and that's what we'll continue to do.
"But we have to try to find a way to bring a cutting edge to the possession play that we have."
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