Tony Mowbray 'not pointing the finger at strikers' for Sunderland problems

Sunderland head coach Tony Mowbray is not blaming the strikers for the poor recent form, but he says they hold the solution...

Tony Mowbray says a Sunderland striker ‘catching fire’ will change Sunderland’s season and he is confident that things ‘will turn’ soon.

Sunderland are going into December still awaiting a goal from a striker this season, which is a remarkable situation.

It got no better in the 2-1 home defeat to Huddersfield in which Eliezer Mayenda was handed a first start but, like the Sunderland’s other centre-forwards this season, found himself starved of opportunities.

For Mowbray, though, the solution appears to be that one of Mason Burstow, Luis Hemir, Nazariy Rusyn and Mayenda just hit a purple patch.

"Burstow played seven or eight games on the bounce, Rusyn has played three or four on the bounce, last night was Mayenda's opportunity,” Mowbray said following defeat to the Terriers.

"We hope that one of them catches fire and can start banging in the goals. For centre-forwards, their job is to put the ball in the back of the net.

"I'm not just pointing the finger at the strikers though, we create chances as a team and sometimes we have to score goals from all over the pitch and generally we have done that over the last 14 or 15 months. It just seems to have dried up a little bit at this moment."

A lack of goals has really hurt Sunderland in recent weeks and been the biggest reason behind a run that now stands at five defeats in the last eight games.

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Mowbray is unwilling to admit that goalscoring has already become a problem, though.

"It's not as though we are free-scoring at the moment and, moving forward, we have to try and find an answer otherwise the goals for will become a problem,” he said. “In the previous two home games we scored three in each.

“Since I have been at this football club we have generally found a way to score goals even last season when we had a lot of time without any strikers.

"This year we have got young strikers and we're trying to get them up to speed. In the last two away games we had 49 shots at goal (but couldn’t score in either of them).

"I think if your stats stay that high - I'm not sure how many shots we had last night, I haven't looked - it will turn."

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