Tony Mowbray says Sunderland have genuine promotion ambitions this season - albeit their stretched squad will make it very tough over the final three months of the season. The Black Cats exited the FA Cup last night at the hands of Premier League Fulham, losing their fourth round replay 3-2 at the Stadium of Light.
And that means their entire focus will now be on their Championship campaign as they look to continue the momentum that has brought them to within a couple of points of the play-off places. Mowbray says the club's recruitment team deserves 'huge credit' for bringing in players of the calibre of Patrick Roberts, Amad, and Jack Clarke.
He says Sunderland are looking to lay the foundations of a team that can challenge for promotion to the top flight, but has not yet written off their chances of doing so this term although the fact their top scorer Ross Stewart and skipper Corry Evans have been ruled out for the rest of the campaign will make sustaining a challenge very difficult. "We've got some really good players," he said.
READ MORE: Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray praises performance but rues missed opportunity against Fulham
"The recruitment of the club - before I got here and in the previous windows - has been good and the recruitment department deserves huge credit. To have Patrick Roberts and Jack Clarke and Amad and these sort of players is a huge credit - Aji Alese, Dennis Cirkin even though he missed out with concussion last night - these are really super young players and if we can keep that over the next few windows we are going to be a strong team that has an ambition to get out of this league.
"With 17 games to go we have ambition now because we are within touching distance, but the reality is that we are very short on numbers in the squad and you are going to have go into the squad in these games because for the next few weeks, for instance, we have games Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday. The effort and the work ethic you saw last night, they have to reproduce it every three days for the next three or four weeks and it's not easy."
Sunderland have a very youthful side but Mowbray sees that as a positive rather than a negative. He said: "We're on a journey. We've just come out of League One and as long as the fans can see a team that is fighting every week and is heading in the right direction…
"We're trying to get there week by week but there are going to be some dips along the way because you are asking the same players to hit the same intensity levels. I'm very conscious of trying to lose the narrative that we are a young team - I think you can see they are good enough.
"It doesn't matter if you are 20 or if you are 30, if you can compete and you can run and you can pass and you can tackle, you are good enough."
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