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It was three points that made the Championship table begin to look rather exciting for Sunderland.

Winning Saturday's only second-tier fixture took the Black Cats to within one point of the top six and seven clear of the bottom four. Significantly, it also marked the first time this side has secured back-to-back wins this season.

Mowbray's hope in the second half of the season is that fewer injuries means a better balance and more consistency in selection, which should in turn lead to more consistency of performance.

The message of the head coach after the game was nevertheless a very grounded one.

Sunderland had been poor, second best in the first half and that was not lost on either Mowbray or his players. He stressed the need to keep improving and to keep building, and having marked out Danny Batth for special praise he also pointed to the tireless work-rate of Ellis Simms as showing the way forward.

"We were happy with the points, it was an important game for us," he said.

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"We made the call to play it early and Millwall were happy to do it, it's just about levelled the table up for us in terms of the games played. We are where we are, tenth but just one point outside the play-off places. We have to be relatively happy with that.

Ellis Simms scores Sunderland's third goal on Saturday afternoon

"We're not happy with the first half performance but we are happy with the result and we have to keep improving. Nobody is seeing that we're this or that we're that, we just have to bring an honesty to these supporters and to this football club. Then through the transfer windows, we have to keep filling the place with quality, good players that can win us football matches.

"And when those players work as hard as they did in the second half... you use Ellis Simms as an example, he was out on his feet and on another day with another option, we might well have brought him off. He kept running, chasing, closing down and he gets an opportunity at the end to score. I was delighted for him."

Mowbray said that a game against Carlos Corberan's resurgent West Brom would be a 'big test' of their progress.

The clear Sunderland message Tony Mowbray had after a crucial win - and how Ellis Simms showed the way