Tony Mowbray was proud of the way his Sunderland side competed with a Burnley team he described as the best in the Championship - and insists the Black Cats could have won at Turf Moor. Sunderland earned a point in a goalless draw against the Clarets in Lancashire, becoming only the third team this season to keep a clean sheet in the league against Vincent Kompany's runaway leaders who are destined to return to the Premier League at the first attempt.
And the Black Cats' night could have got even better if Amad had seen his shot loop under the crossbar rather than come back off the woodwork 20 minutes from time, or had Abdoullah Ba not been standing in an offside position when Jack Clarke found the net from an unlikely angle near the end. But, despite that, Mowbray was pleased with the way his side performed in front of the Sky TV cameras as they stood up to the test in what was undoubtedly their toughest game of the season against a Burnley side that remains unbeaten at home.
"When you come here you know you are playing the best team in the league - their points suggest that, their victories suggest that, and I don't think they've been beaten at home this season," said Mowbray. "I said before the game that we just had to go and challenge ourselves, really, go and compete and enjoy the night.
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"We tried to play on the front foot and yet they do build from the back and go across and wait for you to press wrong and then they are at you pretty quickly, but we generally got it right tonight. With a little bit more aggression, a little bit more intensity at the top [of the pitch] and we might have nicked one or two more [loose balls].
"When you play against teams like this, you need to be able to nick it - one pass, goal. We didn't do that quite enough today.
"But it's a great experience for the young players and they will only learn from it. There were plenty of positives. We've come away from home against a team that's top of the table and we are disappointed really that we didn't take one of our chances.
"We've hit the crossbar, we had a 'goal' ruled out for offside; they had chances, but nothing where you thought 'they should have scored there'."
Sunderland were solid in defence with Lynden Gooch outstanding at left-back in his first start since mid-January, and Luke O'Nien also excelling after being switched to central defence in the absence of Dan Ballard.
"It doesn't surprise me," Mowbray said of Gooch. "He's a warrior, isn't he?
"I think Lynden Gooch and Luke O'Nien are the grit and the determination in this team, really. Any team that's going to have any level of success has to have players who want to put their foot in, who want to win headers, want to block shots, and they epitomise all those qualities.
"I've talked about soldiers and artists and those two are very much the soldiers - we've got a few artists, too. The balance was alright tonight."
Mowbray left Amad, Edouard Michut, and Ba out of his starting XI, with the former having only returned from international duty with the Ivory Coast on Thursday evening, while the other two had been away with France U19s and had been involved in three games in southern Spain. Mowbray said: "Amad arrived at the hotel at 7pm last night, straight from Manchester when his flight got in.
"He hasn't trained with anybody all week, I've no idea what his physical condition is - obviously, we would want to start with Amad but we couldn't start with him, it would have been the wrong thing to do. Edouard and Abdoullah have been away too, and they have been involved in three games.
"There's only Trai Hume who was away on international duty who started, and he didn't play any minutes with Northern Ireland so he was pretty fresh."
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