'Don't think..': Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray delivers clear verdict after late Cardiff City winner

Tony Mowbray insisted there were a lot of positives for Sunderland despite seeing their winning run ended by a late Cardiff City goal on Sunday.

The Black Cats dominated possession throughout the game but were caught out late on when Mark McGuinness met a corner in the 87th minute to secure a 1-0 win.

Mowbray was frustrated that his side couldn't make their dominance pay but insisted there was no reason to overreact.

"I don't think we should be too disappointed with the performance, we gave it a real go," Mowbray said.

"We found it a lot last year that teams are allowed to come here and defend, they put a lot of bodies behind the ball and they were very resilient, they put their bodies on the line. We just had to find that extra bit of quality. It felt like we dominated and should have won, but they found a way at the end.

"It's frustrating for us because there was a lot of good stuff, a lot of getting into the right areas and it was just maybe that final pass. They made some good blocks in the second half and so we have to give them credit for that. We weren't able to break them down.

"They were very athletic, very resilient, didn't give us a chance to press because they played out into their 6ft wide attackers. So it wasn't a day for pressing high, it was a day for trying to break down a deep block when we had the ball and we had it a lot. We couldn't find a way, we had a lot of moments where with a better decision or a bit of quality we'd have scored.

"We talked a lot last year about it but the reason why we win more away from home sometimes is because we have to find that killer touch against teams who sit a lot of players behind the ball.

"We were trying to score that goal late on and we were leaving players up the pitch. They had a game plan and they made life difficult for us, but there were lots of real positives for our team. We got into some good positions, we worked the ball well across the pitch. It's not easy when there's eight players inside the box, it's hard to find the space and one comment I made after the game is that sometimes you have to shoot from 25 yards... it could get that ricochet and wrong foot the goalkeeper. We've conceded goals like that ourselves this season, you can't always score the perfect goal.

"They defended very well today and I thought they had to. I don't think it was an end-to-end game, I thought it was us attacking and then every now and then they would break away. Their substitutes, every one of them seemed to be 6ft4 and in the end that cost us, they scored from a set play. We're disappointed we didn't make the first contact and clear that set play because we do a lot of work on that. We just have to take it on the chin, we'll win a lot of games if the performance level is as high as it was today."

Sunderland are back in action at Sheffield Wednesday next Friday.