Sunderland kept their Premier League ambitions alive with victory over Norwich City as Tony Mowbray’s side showed they are still in the race for the Championship playoffs.
As the Black Cats came away with all three points they also kept hold of the Friendship Trophy following their 1-0 victory over Norwich at Carrow Road.
For those of you who have never heard of it before, the cup was created after the two sides met in the League Cup final in 1985, as a symbol of friendship between both sets of supporters.
Abdoulla Ba scored the only goal of the game – firing home from long range – as David Wagner’s side struggled to create many clear-cut chances.
Mowbray’s side secured a much-needed victory to end their run of three straight defeats in recent weeks, boosting their chances of making the playoffs as a result.
While Mowbray dismissed the suggestion that it was nothing but a fluke as he insisted that their recent slump in form didn’t paint the full picture.
The Sunderland head coach said: “Somebody said to me that it was a surprising result. Was it?
“We had 72 percent possession at Coventry, we had more shots, more efforts on goal, more efforts on target, and got beat 2-1; at Rotherham we could have won 3-1 or 4-1 but got beat 2-1. If we’d won both of those, we would have been right up there [in the top six].
“We hadn’t lost an away game since October [until losing at Rotherham], so is it [winning at Norwich] a shock? I don’t think it is a shock to have won at Norwich.
“We went to Fulham [in the FA Cup] who were sixth in the Premier League at the time and drew 1-1.”
Sunderland fans can be thrilled with the performance Mowbray’s side produced as they reduced the gap to Norwich to three points in the Championship.
He added: “I’m happy, not just because we won but with the performance.
“I’m not sitting here thinking ‘oh, we can get in the play-offs’ – what I know is that we are not looking over our shoulder and worrying that we are going to get dragged into a relegation scrap.
“We’ve got 52 points and I’m not sure many clubs have been relegated with 52 points.
“We’ve got ten games to go, we have to go and win five or six of them and see where it takes us.”
