Inside the challenging night Tony Mowbray's Sunderland overcame a major hurdle - and how they did it

It was the kind of challenge that told you the game was up and the contest won.

Jack Clarke had scythed through Blackburn Rovers time and time again in the second half and so now, with the two-goal lead safe and just seconds to play, the frustration told and he was scythed down by a cynical challenge.

It was a scene that you would have struggled to foresee in the opening quarter of this game, when all the fluency and the threat and the energy came from the home side. By the end of this game it was delirium and 'Clarke will tear you apart' on repeat in the away end but there will have been relief in there, too.

Tony Mowbray had set his players a challenge ahead of this game, well aware that since his arrival (and indeed since promotion from League One) Sunderland had not at any stage won three league games in a row.

The first and most obvious reason for that is that this is the Championship and it is relentless and it is difficult. It's a division where you're back in action just a few days after your last away day, next to no preparation time before facing a side whose style is diametrically opposed to your previous opponent. There are traps everywhere, in short.

The other reason, Mowbray feels, is that with such a young side the emotion of winning back-to-back can sometimes run away with you - maintaining the discipline and the intensity can be a challenge.

For much of the first half, his fears were realised.

Blackburn were excellent, a side whose youth and creativity and movement mirrors that of Sunderland. Though both Ipswich Town and Preston North End beat Mowbray's side in the opening weeks of the season, Jon Dahl Tomasson's were the first to really open them up on a regular basis.

Sunderland struggled to contain them and in possession, they were often forced into going more direct. Generally, the effect was merely to invite another attack.

"I think the team this team is better than last season," Mowbray said afterwards

"I know we had Amad who is an amazing individual footballer who could damage teams. I feel the positional play of the team is better this year. And yet they denied us our build-up. They committed a lot of men forward, they did to us today what we did to Southampton.

"We gambled man for man at the back against them but committed an extra man into the press, which is what they did today, and it's difficult to get out when a team is really intense, locked on, man for man all over the pitch.

"That's why we played so many long goal kicks particularly in the first half, because we tried to draw their centre-halves deep and tried to get our wide players driving in diagonally, because we know they were going to press really high on us. They did and they were really good at it."

Yet Sunderland found their way into the lead at half time and it wasn't purely about luck. They have an exceptional and maturing centre-half in Dan Ballard, whose last-ditch defending was superb. A maturing central midfielder Dan Neil, who took his goal impressively and on his weaker foot, too.

And they have Clarke, who gives his side a chance even if in the first half hour of this game he was the primary focus of Mowbray's frustration on the touchline.

Mowbray's message at half time was to lift the intensity, to get tight to Blackburn's talented players and to start making more challenges. It didn't diminish their threat entirely and throughout an enthralling second half they still carved out plenty of chances, but there was a balance to the game now where Sunderland looked their match. Sometimes Blackburn got through but often they didn't, and now Sunderland had the ball in dangerous areas and with their most dangerous players in space.

This was not vintage Sunderland as we have come to know them in recent times, but it was yet another game in which they found a way to churn out the result and that is not to be underestimated when you consider that the squad is still a little underpowered at the moment.

Pierre Ekwah is a big miss to the side given the quality and physicality he has brought to midfield, and unsurprisingly it took a little while for Jobe to adjust to his new role - something he did impressively in the second half. They are also without both Dennis Cirkin and Aji Alese, meaning that Niall Huggins is having to get back up to Championship speed on the job - something which he too did well in the second half.

There have been flashes of encouraging quality from Mason Burstow and Adil Aouchiche but both are still settling into a new team and a new group. Nazariy Rusyn, Eliezer Mayenda and Timothée Pembélé are yet to make their debut.

Sunderland have now taken thirteen points from their last fifteen and the general quality of much of their play backs up Mowbray's claim that they are improving from last season's mightily-impressive efforts. To maintain this run of form they will undoubtedly have to perform better than they did in the opening stages of this game, but their early consistency suggests a growing maturity in the group that will hopefully stand them in good stead for the challenges ahead.

And what becomes increasingly clear by the game is that even when not at their best, Sunderland have the quality to hurt any opponent at this level.