Tony Mowbray’s honest verdict on Sunderland signings Jenson Seelt and Nectar Triantis after summer transfers

Tony Mowbray says new centre-back signings Jenson Seelt and Nectarios Triantis need time to settle in at Sunderland but have to be ready if a first-team opportunity presents itself.

Seelt, 20, joined The Black Cats from PSV this summer and is yet to make his competitive debut following an ankle issue which impacted his game time during pre-season.

Triantis, also 20, arrived from Australian side Central Coast Mariners and did play 90 minutes during Sunderland’s Carabao Cup match against Crewe last month.

With Luke O’Nien and Dan Ballard performing well in the heart of The Black Cats’ defence, Seelt and Traintis have been on the senior side’s bench in recent weeks, while making appearances for the under-21s.

Still, following Danny Batth’s move to Norwich this summer, one of Sunderland’s young centre-backs may be fast-tracked into the first team if O’Nien or Ballard suddenly became unavailable.

Asked how comfortable he’d feel selecting Seelt or Traintis at this stage, Mowbray told the Echo: “I think they need time to settle in. I think they need time at this moment.

“I’m hoping we don’t need to do that. If we do have to throw them in they have to go in and they have to learn out there in the arena really.

“I do think they have come from hugely different leagues to what they are going to be asked to play in here.

“As I’ve said to them I feel they need to play games, they need to play 21s football, we need to do 11 v 11s pretty regularly on the training ground against the 21s.

“I feel as if both of them young lads have played probably with an older head, a communicator, a talker and I think in my mind alongside O’Nien it would be fine, I’m pretty sure because they have good attributes.

“They are both mobile, they are both aggressive, they both want to win the ball and sometimes they just need a soothing or a calming voice next to them to tell them when to go aggressive and when to sit off and let the player come to them really.

“That’s all experience and you get that through playing games. When we have to make them calls them calls will be made of course, but at this moment I’m happy that Luke and Dan are doing the job.

“Listen, just around the corner potentially that’s going to come and they have to be ready and I say that to them every day. They have to be patient, work hard in training and when they play 21s games or bounce games at the training ground they have to play it like a first-team game and be really focused.”

Seelt and Traintis could feature when Sunderland U21s face Derby U21s in Premier League 2 on Monday at Eppleton CW.

Graeme Murty’s side will then face Aston Villa away from home on Friday, September 29, the same night Sunderland’s first team will play Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough in the Championship.