Tony Mowbray reflected on Sunderland's 1-1 draw with Mallorca, but also gave fitness updates on new signings Bradley Dack and Eliezer Mayenda...
GENERAL THOUGHTS
“I thought it was a good challenge for us. I think they’re a good team, they finished ninth in La Liga last year and brought a big squad of players with them. First half particularly we were full of energy and intensity and generally got the better of the game. But you could feel their quality that they could threaten our goal. They scored early in the second half which gave them great confidence. We seemed to run out of steam a little bit but fought our way back. I think re-energising the team with some substitutes helped us and we looked a real threat in the last 10 or 15 minutes, breaking away and looking like we could have scored again. I think one all is about right, I think we played against a good team. It’s good to play against a team that ‘should’ be better than us with their league status and where they finished. We’ve played a lot of teams from the start of pre-season that I would have hoped we’re better than, and scored plenty of goals and won football matches. And today it was a good test and a good challenge, one I felt we stood up to and did alright.”
HEMIR GOAL
“Obviously Hemir scoring the goal early on is great for him, he’s scored a few goals now. I’m sure the supporters who came today will see the qualities that he’s got. He is a big six foot four lad, he’s not bursting everywhere and sprinting around the pitch but he has got a nice soft touch and he’s a strong boy. Took a few knocks today from a very physical defensive unit but I think it’s good for him to get used to the physicality that’s coming this season. Hopefully he’ll surprise a few people, what we do need to know is that he needs a little bit of help. We can’t expect a 20-year-old boy who’s not really played much men’s football to lead the line for 40 odd games. But he’s shown me that he’s got more than enough to become a really important player for us this season.”
CIRKIN
“Dennis needed it. I told him we wouldn’t play him 90 but he needed a good run out, he got 60 or 70 minutes. Dennis is a really important footballer for this club, particularly at this moment as Alese’s going to be out for the foreseeable future. So we need to keep Dennis fit, strong, believing, confident and what a player he is on his day.”
DACK
“It’s great that the club have brought attacking reinforcements in. I think Dack just needs a couple of weeks to get up to playing speed. He played at the end of last season but he hasn’t had any pre-season. He’s been training on his own with a physical instructor but that would have been a lot of straight line running to keep his aerobic fitness up. We need some football training so we’ll give him some football training over the next few weeks. We’d probably target the League Cup game on a couple of weeks Tuesday to see if we can get him on the pitch and see how quickly we can get him up to speed to playing in the Championship. Hopefully that won’t be too long."
MAYENDA
"Eliezer’s picked up a little hamstring injury in training unfortunately, the young boy, but I don’t see that as a major issue because he’s a young boy who we haven’t had on the pitch and thought ‘wow, what a footballer’. He’s just a young kid who’s coming along and I’m sure in the future when he gets over this little strain he’ll try and make an impact at our club. His attributes are power and speed and they’re some assets we could probably do with up the top end of the pitch, some real genuine pace.”
