Sunderland coach on '˜great man and professional' Jan Kirchhoff as he makes long-awaited return

The 26-year-old trained with Dickman’s U23 set-up while the first team squad were in New York as he stepped up his injury recovery.

He rejoined the senior squad on their return but managed 64 minutes against Manchester United last night.

Dickman said it had been a mutually beneficial arrangement and added that even he had learned from the former Bayern Munich man.

George Honeyman, Donald Love and Lynden Gooch also started the 3-1 defeat.

Dickman said: “It was great for the other lads, he’s a great man, a real professional who helps them out a lot. It was a great experience for all of us [having him train], me included. For the other lads to see how he trains, and the really good thing was that he was talking to them, giving them advice which is what it is all about really.”

Kirchhoff’s presence was unable to inspire his team-mates to victory as they were comprehensively outplayed in the first half by Nicky Butt’s outfit.

They are back in action against Leicester on Sunday and Dickman is calling for greater resilience from his side.

He said: “[It was] Disappointing result, first half, I didn’t think we passed the ball as well as we could, didn’t seem to have the enthusiasm to play and want to do the basics right. First half I don’t think we got that but second we did, you can say it’s easy when you’re 2-0 down but we showed a bit of character and played some OK stuff.

“The main thing is without the ball, we were a little bit too open, against a team like that they will hurt you. We’ve got to be a bit more tight and a bit more resilient.”