Tony Mowbray has backed Joe Gelhardt to get goals for Sunderland - after the on-loan Leeds United man was the width of the woodwork away from scoring at QPR. The January addition is still finding his feet at his new club and has yet to open his account but twice went close in the 3-0 win at Loftus Road, hitting the sidenetting in the first period and then the crossbar late in the second half.
The 20-year-old is making the adjustment from being a bit-part player at Leeds to being a regular starter at Sunderland, with Ross Stewart's season-ending injury leaving Gelhardt as the Black Cats' only available striker for the remainder of the campaign. And Mowbray said of the youngster: "He will score goals for us.
"He's a kid who's played ten minutes here and ten minutes there for Leeds United. He's hardly played 90 minutes, which is why I was taking him off ready for Saturday so he can give us another hour or 70 minutes.
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"Yet he's strong as an ox, he works his socks off, and he has a rocket in his left foot. He'll score goals, he's a really talented boy.
"He just needs to understand how our team plays and the demands on him, because he is a young boy who has always been behind [Patrick] Bamford and all these foreign Premier League players at Leeds. He was getting ten minutes here and there, so for him to come into our team and be asked to play 70, 80, 90 minutes every three days is a huge ask for the kid."
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