Tony Mowbray hailed Sunderland's last-day rise into the play-offs as 'miraculous', with the Black Cats overcoming a season littered with obstacles. Goals from Amad, Alex Pritchard, and Jack Clarke gave the Black Cats a 3-0 win over Preston at Deepdale, but that still left them reliant on results elsewhere.
They needed either Middlesbrough to beat Coventry City, or for Millwall to drop points at home to Blackburn Rovers - and while Boro and Coventry drew 1-1, Mowbray's former club Blackburn came from 3-1 down to win 4-3 at The Den. It meant Sunderland finished sixth in their first season back in the Championship and they will now face Luton Town in the play-off semi-finals.
But to reach this point, Mowbray and his team have had to overcome horrendous injury problems that have dogged them all season, leaving them to play more than half the season without a centre-forward, and to face the run-in without a centre-back. Yet they have defied the odds, and Mowbray said: "I didn't really want to hear that somebody was winning or losing [elsewhere].
