Tony Mowbray beginning to baffle too often with odd decisions

Liking Tony Mowbray should not make him immune to criticism.

After years of supporting Sunderland, you’re on a hiding to nothing if defeats annoy you. They’re just part and parcel of it.

The manner of the defeats is something that can grate though, and it’s started to grate a bit too often under Tony Mowbray.

That is not to say I don’t like him or don’t back him. He’s a very likable guy and has done plenty of good things since arriving at Sunderland. I’m all for persisting with him and feel he could play a huge part in the club’s rebirth as a force in English football again.

That’s not to say he is above criticism, though. Certainly, he had no problem pinning the blame for the 2-1 defeat to West Brom on the mentality, and inexperience, of the players.

Speaking after the game, Mowbray said: "We need to address the scenario where we feel that we have to protect something, because we don't help ourselves - we sat too deep, invited pressure on, when this team at this stadium needs to play on the front foot. Yet it's a human thing, really, sometimes to try and protect what you have got.”

The only problem with that, of course, is that we saw it. We watched the odd decisions, the frustrating inactivity, and not for the first time either.

If you have just conceded the lead at home and the manager is replacing a creative midfield player with an extra defender, that’s not the players setting the tone – it’s the manager.

When you are losing at home and have a player like Patrick Roberts sat on the bench – and five defenders on the pitch – it’s fair game to question the manager’s ambition to win the game.

Even when the changes came to try and score a goal at the end, taking off your only striker is just plane baffling.

In that sense, it is not the players and their mentality or naivety being brought into question, it’s the decisions of the manager. More to the point, it’s completely fair.

No one is expecting Sunderland to storm the Championship this season and no one ever has. Yes, we are a newly promoted team who has just spent four years languishing in League One. A degree of reality is obviously required and, as far as I can tell, the fans have understood that.

West Brom have some real quality in their team and you have to respect it. Perhaps their extra bit of quality would have told in the end either way. We’ll never know.

While we can’t say for sure that Tony Mowbray lost Sunderland that game, what we can be certain about is that he did absolutely nothing to affect it. The same thing happened against Burnley. It happened against Cardiff. It’s now happened against West Brom. It’s a definite, and wholly reasonable, worry, no matter how likeable he may be. 

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