Chris Coleman reveals mood of Sunderland players after Sheffield United thumping

Sunderland, third-bottom in the Championship, were humbled at Sheffield United on Boxing Day after producing one of the worst performances of the campaign to date.

Today they travel to the City Ground to face Mark Warburton’s mid-table Forest side.

And Coleman has demanded a big response.

“The players were angry after the game but be angry before the game,” said Coleman. “That is when you have to be angry.

“I’m not looking at the players and saying ‘I’ve never seen that before from any of my teams’ because I have.

“I was a player myself, I had a day like that.

“You have to make sure it doesn’t happen for a long time again. You won’t get points every game but it is how you go about your business.

“You don’t want a finger being pointed at you.

“We didn’t show up, even in a relegation dogfight, which is where we are at the moment and it is about how quickly we get away from that.

“That word fight, that is the least you bring to the party and we didn’t really have that.

“It is not something you want to see,” added the Sunderland boss.