Luke O'Nien missed Sunderland's trip to Cardiff City because his wife Georgia is due to give birth any time now, says Tony Mowbray. Defender O'Nien did not travel to with the rest of the squad for this afternoon's 1-0 win at the Cardiff City Stadium.
And afterwards Mowbray explained that, with O'Nien's wife expecting to give birth imminently, the club agreed that a six-and-a-half hour trip to South Wales would have left him too far from home. "Luke's wife is about to give birth," said Mowbray.
"We're six-and-a-half hours away and we had a discussion with him and we were happy, as a football club to allow him to stay with his wife and hopefully she has a safe birth this week - or, for all I know, she might have gone into labour today. It's too close for him to be six-and-a-half hours away, we agreed, and we managed to find a way to get a result without him."
READ MORE: Tony Mowbray relieved as Dennis Cirkin provides Sunderland with much-needed cutting edge at Cardiff
Sunderland made light of O'Nien's absence, with his replacement Dennis Cirkin scoring the only goal of the game to see off the Bluebirds and send the Black Cats into the Championship top ten. With no O'Nien, Mowbray opted to rejig his defence and use Cirkin and Trai Hume either side of Danny Batth in a back three rather than bring in inexperienced young centre-back Joe Anderson, who joined from Everton in January but has only five minutes of senior football to his name.
Mowbray said: "Joe is a young boy who came from the U21s at Everton and we feel he needs to grow into the football club, really. He is a brilliant kid, I'm just not sure he is physically ready for the Championship at this moment.
"He might be disappointed [about that]."
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