Inside a brilliant afternoon for Sunderland as Tony Mowbray finds some very welcome answers

In his Academy of Light office hangs the tactics board with each player of his senior squad written on. Of late he has been moving the magnets in every direction imaginable, weighing up everything and anyone in search of a solution to the club’s ongoing striker shortage.

Mowbray knows that in times like this a manager is treading a fine line between genius and tactical mania.

After this win he may feel like is getting somewhere. After a frustrating week of two points, one goal and an overwhelming sense of momentum being checked, this was arguably Sunderland’s best result of the season to date. Mowbray and his players flipped the narrative in 45 second-half minutes of vibrant, attacking football. And above all else, 45 minutes in which they were dangerous.

It had looked a long way back at the break. Mowbray had switched to a 3-5-2 and conscious of the way opponents have been able to counter Jack Clarke and Patrick Roberts in wide areas of late, he pushed them both infield in a very unorthodox strike partnership.

Either side of an utterly dismal 20-minute period through the middle of the half there were some tentatively encouraging signs. Roberts had some dangerous early moments and looked to have been onside when he fired past Ben Amos. Moments later Clarke missed a good opening when he burst into the box following more good work from Pritchard, but in the main it had been tough to watch.

Again, it had felt hard to be critical of Sunderland. They were facing an opponent with a massive advantage in terms of physicality, understandably happy to play for set plays and the opportunity to launch the ball into the box. The game for the most part had no real rhythm, Wigan happy for the hosts to move the ball nicely so long as it was a good distance from their own six-yard box, which it again invariably was. The only tangible difference between this half and the most recent two home games at the Stadium of Light was that when they had the opportunity to break, they took it ruthlessly.

Nathan Broadhead had been a virtual bystander through the first half but everyone at the Stadium of Light knows that he needs only a moment. When it came he spun away from Luke O’Nien in a flash, the end result being a clever back-post finish from Charlie Wyke. Add James McClean’s cross to the move and it was three former Black Cats playing a crucial role in the goal. It just really, really felt like one of those afternoons.

So what changed?

In part it was formation but Mowbray’s post-match remarks suggested he strongly felt it was more about mentality. He told his players he had no interest in possession statistics. He wanted them to take risks, and his technical players to operate not in front of their defenders but deep in the opposition half. It left big gaps for Wigan to exploit but it also left them unable to maintain their previously impressive defensive shape. There were moments when it was hard to work out exactly what shape Sunderland were playing, such was the constant rotation of players and the regularity of their forward runs.

Mowbray finally got the poacher’s goal he had been craving when Elliot Embleton turned Dennis Cirkin’s cross home from close range and then watched on in agony as ball after ball flashed across the Wigan goal. No matter, it was coming. Pritchard was continuing to pick gaps, Roberts continuing to draw fouls. The upshot was a glorious cross from the former after quick thinking from O’Nien, and a brilliant header from Cirkin at the back post. It was an effort every bit worthy of Niall Quinn, watching on from the stands as his retirement from football two decades precious was marked.

Cirkin was outstanding, and the long-awaited prospect of him playing alongside the ever-impressive Aji Alese delivered exactly the kind of result Mowbray and the club’s supporters had hoped for.

“I want us to be a brave football team,” Mowbray said afterwards. This second half was his template.

Sunderland’s head coach looks also to be finding some answers as to the structure of the team without Simms and Stewart. Clarke may not be a natural centre forward but he is prepared to try and hold the ball up and most importantly of all he is prepared to try and make those Stewart-esque surges behind the opposition defence - it has been by far Sunderland’s most convincing solution to date. And if any player typified Sunderland’s second-half transformation it was Amad. Nominally the second striker in a 4-4-2 he drifted here, there and everywhere. Sometimes that meant doubling up on Wigan’s left side with Roberts, sometimes it meant racing back to be his side’s defensive midfielder.

So far the Manchester United loanee has been an enigmatic player for his head coach, producing some wonderful moments but a lack of ruthlessness in the final third. But it will also not have passed Mowbray by that so many of his team’s most promising spells, the latter stages at Watford, Swansea and the second half here, have come when Amad has been operating in this role.

It’s high risk but it’s brave and often incisive: exactly what Mowbray is looking for. A much-needed step forward.