Graeme Murty hails Alan Browne's influence on Sunderland U21s after 7-0 Huddersfield Town drubbing

Graeme Murty has insisted the presence of first-team midfielder Alan Browne helped push his team forward this week.

The former Preston North End stalwart has been missing from action since suffering a broken leg against Coventry City in the Championship last November but played his first football in 94 days for Murty’s under-21s in the Premier League Cup against Huddersfield Town on Tuesday.

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Browne played 45 minutes of the 7-0 win before being replaced by Elias Lenz for the second half. The Republic of Ireland international looked sharp in the middle of the field as he looks to build fitness ahead of his return to Régis Le Bris’ first-team squad.

“They want to go and measure themselves against that,” Murty said when asked about Browne’s influence around the group after the game. “So if they can go beyond what he's doing, if they can go and hit that number of accelerations, decelerations, the amount of distance he's going to cover but also play with the level of quality that they did.

“I think that's really going to give them confidence as well. going forward, that they can go and play and train on a first-team plateau and then go and show what they're about, because I thought the two players in midfield alongside him (Ben Middlemas and Jaydon Jones), I thought were excellent as well.”

Ahmed Abdullahi netted a hat-trick for the under-21s against Huddersfield Town with strikes also coming from Jaydon Jones, Jack Whittaker, Ben Middlemas and a Terriers’ own goal to ensure Murty’s men progressed to the knockout stages of the Premier League Cup.

“I challenged the players at the start to give us a 90-minute performance, to show that they're not only good players but they're developing an understanding of what we do. I thought you saw it in spades,” Murty said after the game.

“I think the way that we started really set a good, strong foundation for the performance. We were really slick with the ball, we were really smooth and the tempo that we played at was really, really high. On quite a cold, blustery night, I thought that they managed the conditions really well.”

“It's knockout football now,” Murty added on Sunderland’s progression to the next round of the Premier League 2 Cup. “So they need to understand if you're going to turn up and do this in a performance, you need to back it up.

“Because good teams play week in and week out and they sustain their level of performance. So I thought our level of performance and our level of application and understanding today was really, really, really pleasing,” Murty concluded after the clash.

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