Sunderland must put their Middlesbrough defeat behind them as they prepare for their midweek trip to Reading, insists Tony Mowbray. The Black Cats lost a tight game 1-0 at the Riverside Stadium on Monday night, with new head coach Mowbray losing against his former club in what was his second game in charge of Sunderland.
Mowbray's gameplan was thrown into disarray minutes before kick-off when top scorer Ross Stewart limped out of the warm-up with a thigh injury, an injury which is expected to sideline him for between six and eight weeks, and he had to make a last-minute change with Patrick Roberts promoted to the starting XI in Stewart's place. Sunderland were due to face Millwall tomorrow at the Stadium of Light, but that game was postponed - along with the entire weekend Premier League and EFL schedules - in the wake of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II yesterday afternoon.
And that means their first opportunity to return to action will come at the Madejski Stadium on Wednesday night. "Because of the nature of this league, you have to be ready to bounce back," said Mowbray.
READ MORE: Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray admits he must 'find a way' to cope without Ross Stewart
"You have to recover quickly in the Championship because every team is going to suffer defeats. We have to take the result [at Boro] on the chin.
"We should maybe have been one-up in the first five or six minutes and then it might have been a different game. They were pretty strong and I do think we were trying to react from literally two minutes before we went out [for kick-off], because our centre-forward [Stewart] wasn't playing.
"The tactical balance of our team altered quite dramatically, to be honest, when you think of Patrick Roberts' qualities and assets as opposed to Ross' qualities and assets, they are totally different. I thought we got stronger as the game went on and probably felt as though we could have got something out of it, but we didn't.
"We've put that behind us and we have to bounce back pretty quickly."
Despite that defeat, Sunderland have still made a solid start on their return to the Championship following promotion last term. They are currently eighth in the table with 11 points, having won three of their first eight games.
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