Tony Mowbray has warned Sunderland must not let down their guard against struggling Wigan Athletic tonight - insisting the Latics are better than recent results suggest. The Black Cats round out 2022 as they take on Wigan at the DW Stadium, with new Wigan boss Kolo Toure looking for his first victory at the fourth time of asking since taking over at the end of November.
The Latics sit next-to-bottom of the Championship with just one win in their last 11 games - a run that stretches back well before Toure's arrival. Wigan lost 4-1 at Middlesbrough on Boxing Day but Mowbray has watched the video of that game and says the Lancashire outfit were much better than the scoreline suggests.
"Having watched them get beaten 4-1 at the Riverside on Monday, they were miles better than a 4-1 defeat," said Mowbray. "They had 17 shots at goal, they pressed Middlesbrough really well, they were a threat, yet Ryan Giles for Middlesbrough put in some amazing crosses into the box with his left foot and [Chuba] Akpom scored a hat-trick.
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"But they [Wigan] looked a decent team to me, full of energy and playing on the front foot and they were dangerous. You can look at a result sometimes and think 'they're really struggling and they've lost 4-1', but the point I'm trying to make is that they are better than that and it won't be long I'm sure before Kolo [Toure] gets them going and they have belief in the way he is asking them to play - but, hopefully, that'll be after tonight!"
Sunderland beat third-placed Blackburn at home on Boxing Day, moving to within a point of fifth place in the process, and will be full of confidence as they go to Wigan. But Mowbray cautioned: "Wigan will be just as tough a challenge as Blackburn was.
"You can look at the data and the stats and say they haven't won many games recently, they are on a difficult run, they have changed their manager and the new manager hasn't won a game yet, but I see those as really high motivation aspects of a football team. Kolo Toure is a really good guy and he will have the players on board and they will be desperate to do well for him and try to get that first win.
"We have to be ready for a team full of adrenaline, full of desire, and be professional and work really hard to see off their threats and then bring our own quality to the game. The most dangerous thing is think that we've done well against a team third in the league, and now we are playing a team that has had some difficulties over recent weeks and you fall into the trap of not bringing your A game.
"That's what we have to guard against."
Toure was part of Brendan Rodgers' coaching staff at Celtic and more recently at Leicester City before succeeding Leam Richardson at Wigan. During his playing days, he made more than 300 appearances for Arsenal under Arsene Wenger, before moving on to Manchester City, Liverpool, and then Celtic.
Mowbray said: "He's obviously been brought up under Wenger for such a long time and he will want to play football, they want to build and play it out from the back. We've had a few of these where teams have recently changed manager so you can almost scrap the data from the last ten or 12 weeks of the season - forget it - and concentrate on the last three or four weeks, and that's what we've had to do in this instance.
"How are they playing? What are they doing differently?
"Forget about what they did when we beat them at home [in October], because there was a totally different influence on the team."
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