Sunderland will have to wait for the results of a scan on Ross Stewart, with boss Tony Mowbray fearing he could be without his 'talisman' for several weeks. Stewart pulled out of the Black Cats' game against Middlesbrough at the Riverside Stadium at the last minute after suffering a thigh injury in the warm-up.
Mowbray said afterwards that the Scotland striker looks to have torn a muscle, and said that until the club receives the results of a scan it is impossible to tell whether he will be out for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. "He did it shooting in the warm-up really, he's popped a muscle in his thigh," said Mowbray, whose team went on to lose 1-0 on Teesside.
"It seems a very isolated spot so whether it's a tear in the upper thigh when he struck the ball, I don't know. I can't tell you any more - you know how scans work, it either comes back grade one, grade two, or grade three, and he'll be out for either two weeks, four weeks, or eight weeks.
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"Let's wait and see."
Stewart's injury meant that Patrick Roberts was promoted from the bench just before kick-off, and that change turned Sunderland's gameplan upside down. Mowbray said: "The fact we lost Ross right at the end of the warm-up meant we had to readjust everything we had worked on for two or three days in a two-minute chat.
"With all due respect, if you are playing Patrick Roberts as opposed to Ross Stewart then it is a totally different gameplan - you have to get it through the lines, you have to get it in to his feet, you have to get him turned, as opposed to Ross who would be running in behind. You're asking the lads to almost forget about all the stuff we had just done for two days and go and play a different game.
"That's not meant to be an excuse, that's just the reality of it losing your talisman, really, who's scoring the goals and looking a real threat every game."
Stewart was not the only injury Sunderland suffered, with defender Dennis Cirkin going off 15 minutes from time with a hamstring issue. Mowbray said: "It's similar to Ross only it's his hamstring rather than his thigh.
"That suggests a fatigue injury really, given the repetition of games he has played. Again, he'll have to have a scan and we'll see what's wrong with him."
Mowbray was taking charge of Sunderland for the second time, having won his first game at the helm 3-0 at home to Rotherham United last week. But there was to be no happy return to Teesside for the ex-Boro player and manager as Riley McGree's goal in the first half gave the hosts all three points.
Sunderland looked blunt in the final third without Stewart, but Mowbray felt his side could still have got something out of the game. He said: "Early on, [Alex] Pritchard had a chance on the half-turn which he put over the top.
"It was a tight game, we probably did enough not to lose it and yet we did. It's frustrating for us because we had enough opportunities to put the ball in the net.
"I talked to them about personality at half-time, you come to this stadium and you have to have personality. This [Middlesbrough] is a team of men really, one that a lot of people are talking about and saying should be in the top six by the end of the season and they may well be.
"But I felt it was a game we should have got something out of really as we grew into it."
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