Tony Mowbray says Sunderland fell victim to a 'sucker-punch' in injury-time after failing to kill Bristol City off with a second goal. The Black Cats looked to be on course for victory after Jack Clarke had fired them in front on the hour at the Stadium of Light.
They then had a series of chances to extend their lead but could not take them, only to pay the price when Trai Hume gave away a late penalty for a foul on Jay Dasilva which Nakhi Wells converted to give the Robins a point. "I think we played against a decent team - a young, athletic, mobile, team," said Mowbray.
"That's their 11th game unbeaten [in all competitions] so we knew it was going to be tough, but we believed we could win and it looked as though we had. Overall, I'm not sure of the balance of chances etcetera, but there were spells in the game where they gave us problems, but generally we controlled it.
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"We had opportunities that could have led to a second goal because we had a 15-20 minute spell where we were around their box for a long time but it didn't come and ultimately we got sucker-punched at the end with the penalty. We have to saw well done to them, they dug in and got a point - good luck to them."
Mowbray says Sunderland altered their tactics to deal with Bristol's counter-attacking game and admits that did take something from their own attacking threat. He said: "We've been watching them and we tried to organise our team to stop the counter-attack because a lot of their goals and the points they have picked up come when they nick it in midfield and break very, very quickly.
"We tried to stop that, which took a little bit away from our forward momentum, I think, trying to protect against a team that plays counter-attack football. If you're overly-cavalier you'll find yourself 2-0 down because of the way they play, so we tried to protect it and that took the sting out of what we generally try to do.
"When Jack whacked that one in, I thought we'd get over the line. The penalty was a penalty - we have to accept it, put that point in the bag and move on to the next game."
The late equaliser denied Sunderland their third win in the space of a week, following last Saturday's home win against Reading and the midweek victory at QPR, but Mowbray says they would probably have taken a seven-point return from a possible nine if offered at the start of the week. He said: "If we'd said at the start of the week we'd get seven points from three games, one of them another tough trip to London, we'd have probably taken it.
"Let's take the seven points, move on, and see what we get at Rotherham and Coventry next week."
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