Sunderland feel confident they can score at Luton Town in tonight's Championship play-off semi-final second leg, according to Tony Mowbray - leaving the Hatters needing three goals to turn things around. The Black Cats hold a slender single-goal lead as they head to Kenilworth Road this evening, having come from behind to win the first leg 2-1 on Wearside at the weekend.
And if they can finish the job at Luton, they would book their place in the final at Wembley against either Middlesbrough or Coventry City a week on Saturday. Sunderland have spent half the season operating without a natural centre-forward, with star striker Ross Stewart out of action for almost three-quarters of the campaign while Ellis Simms was recalled by Everton at the turn of the year from his loan spell at the Stadium of Light.
That has meant Mowbray and his team have had to adapt, but it does not seem to have severely hampered them in the goalscoring stakes as their haul of 68 goals across the 46-game regular season was the fourth-highest in the Championship with only automatic promotion winners Burnley (87) and Sheffield United (73), along with Boro (84), finding the net more times. Not only that, but Sunderland go into tonight's game having scored in all but one of their last 31 games in all competitions dating back to early November.
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"What gives us a lot of confidence is that we have scored a lot of goals this season despite not having a centre-forward," said Mowbray. "The quality at the top end [of the pitch] is why we score goals.
"They're not centre-forwards really, even [on-loan Leeds United striker] Joe Gelhardt is not really a number nine but he takes up lovely pockets of space, his confidence is high, and his first touch is good. Ally that to [Jack] Clarke, [Alex] Pritchard, [Patrick] Roberts, and Amad, and suddenly the team looks like it has real attacking threat and goals.
"So we take some confidence from the fact that we generally score a goal or two. We're hoping that we can go to Luton and score which will put some extra pressure on them.
"I think the team feels it's going to score, and if we score, Luton have to score three to get through."
Sunderland have been praised all season long for their attractive, attacking, football and Mowbray is determined to stick to that gameplan tonight and avoid being sucked into a scrap in which Luton's strength and power would hand them the advantage. He said: "The difficulty of this match is the intensity, the importance, the urgency of it.
"There's a danger that you get sucked into a fight where you're probably going to get out-punched. So we have to stay calm, we have to play our game, play in the spaces, move the ball.
"We just have to play the way we know, really, and not allow ourselves to be distracted from that."
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