Tony Mowbray says Sunderland looked 'dull' against Reading - but praised his young side for finding a way to win against Reading. The Black Cats were well below their usual standards, although that was partly due to Reading's gameplan which appeared to centre on frustrating Mowbray's men by timewasting at every turn.
The first half was particularly poor, but Sunderland improved after the break and eventually Patrick Roberts made the breakthrough and scored the only goal of the game five minutes from time which was enough to lift the Wearsiders to seventh place in the table, leaving them a point outside the play-off places. "I'm wary of saying it felt like a tired performance, but if I'm being honest it seemed that their brains were a bit dull today," said Mowbray.
"We talked about how we need to play against a team like Reading - Paul [Ince, the Reading manager] was going to set up differently, he knew of our threats - so we knew it was going to be tough to get through them. I felt we were just a bit dull. The team felt a bit dull.
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"There were a few of them moaning about the surface as well, and yet we found a way. Let's put the points in the bag, we won't over-analyse the performance but we do have to be a bit better, braver, tighter on the ball.
"Bright, clever, alert footballers make the game look really easy, but we were anything but that - particularly in the first half we struggled, we were too slow, and couldn't get in between the lines. But I feel we deserved to win the game and as I sit here with three points in the bag, I've just seen the table and we're seventh, so we just have to keep going.
"We've got a tough game on Tuesday night so we will come in tomorrow and recover, get on a train on Monday and go to London and try do it all again at Queens Park Rangers."
Mowbray added: "I can't sit here and say I think we were really good at this or at that today because I don't think it was our best performance by a long way, but we kept a clean sheet against a team that can give you problems. I look at their results recently and they have had a couple of 2-2s away from home against Watford and at home against QPR, so it was good to keep a clean sheet and our concentration levels were good.
"We just needed to be better in that final third, to make better choices."
Reading's tactics drew groans from the crowd, but Mowbray says there are no rules that say a team must play one way and not another and pointed out that they are far from the only away side to take such an approach at the Stadium of Light. He said: "There's no rule in football that says you can't do that.
"There's no rule to say you have to play a certain way, so it's OK. They probably weren't happy with the eulogising of one of the goals we scored down there - it was shown a million times on TV that week and they probably wanted to put the record straight.
"Paul is a winner and I knew his team was going to come here and be really hard to break down. Since I've been here, I've found it seems to be a tactic when teams come to the Stadium of Light.
"Slow the game down, disengage the crowd, take your time on goal kicks, take your time on free-kicks, take the crowd out of the game. Whereas in our dressing room we are talking about making tackles, press, counter-press, close down, because you'll get as big a cheer for a tackle as you will for a great shot because the crowd is engaged.
"So why wouldn't they [away teams] do the opposite?"
Mowbray handed January signing Isaac Lihadji his debut from the bench in the second half, but admitted it was a gamble given the former Lille winger does not yet speak any English to take on board instructions. He said: "It was a bit of gamble bringing Lihadji on because he still doesn't speak a word of English - I had to make sure he was going to play on the right wing!"
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