While yesterday's result was a disappointing one, Tony Mowbray was adamant that there were positives to take - although he admitted Sunderland didn't show enough quality in the final third and perhaps need to test opposition goalkeepers from range more often.
KILLER TOUCH
“Our record at home, we spoke about last year. The reason why we win more games away from home is because we need to find that killer touch against teams who put ten men behind the ball for 90 minutes here. We just didn’t get in the positions to finish it off. We just didn’t find the answer – Cardiff kept it really tight. We have to find a way to break team downs."
POSITIVES TO TAKE
“Hopefully I’m humble enough to say well done to them, they made it difficult for us and good luck to them. There were lots of positives for our team. We were trying to score that goal late on and we were leaving players up the pitch. They had a game plan and they made life difficult for us, but there were lots of real positives for our team. We got into some good positions, we worked the ball well across the pitch."
IF YOU DON'T SHOOT...
"It's not easy when there's eight players inside the box, it's hard to find the space and one comment I made after the game is that sometimes you have to shoot from 25 yards... it could get that ricochet and wrong foot the goalkeeper. We've conceded goals like that ourselves this season, you can't always score the perfect goal."
SET PIECE ADVANTAGE
"They defended very well today and I thought they had to. I don't think it was an end-to-end game, I thought it was us attacking and then every now and then they would break away. Their substitutes, every one of them seemed to be 6ft4 and in the end that cost us, they scored from a set play. We're disappointed we didn't make the first contact and clear that set play because we do a lot of work on that. We just have to take it on the chin, we'll win a lot of games if the performance level is as high as it was today."
COULDN'T BREAK THEM DOWN
“We shouldn’t be too disappointed, they gave it a real go. We found it last year, teams will come and defend here, get men behind the ball and they were very resilient. It's frustrating for us because there was a lot of good stuff, a lot of getting into the right areas and it was just maybe that final pass. They made some good blocks in the second half and so we have to give them credit for that. We weren't able to break them down. They were very athletic, very resilient, didn't give us a chance to press because they played out into their 6ft wide attackers. So it wasn't a day for pressing high, it was a day for trying to break down a deep block when we had the ball and we had it a lot. We couldn't find a way, we had a lot of moments where with a better decision or a bit of quality we'd have scored."
FRUSTRATING
“We have to find that extra bit of quality. It felt like we dominated the game, and it could have been a nice 1-0 win for us. I didn’t think Cardiff looked like winning the game but they have nicked one in the end. It’s frustrating for us really.”
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