Stephen Elliott: This is a very good 'problem' to have for Sunderland head coach Lee Johnson

He is a player that has come to the club with a huge pedigree after plying most of his previous trade at a higher level.

Although he showed up in some nice positions, in the opening 20 minutes I felt he struggled to get up to the speed of things and was a little wayward with his passing at times.

To be honest this was to be expected considering he hasn’t played too much football recently.

He didn’t shy away though and pleasingly in the second period he looked a lot sharper, moved more freely and went looking for the ball a bit more.

The way he took the ball on the half turn and showed a change a pace at times, told me that he has more in the locker than most at this level.

The more minutes under his belt he gets the more I think he will become a player that will be very rarely left out in this team.

He will count himself really unlucky not to have scored too. If his strike had crept in it would have been the icing on the cake for him for his second half showing.

Offensively Sunderland have a lot of players that can conjure up something out of nothing and it will be up to the management team to get the balance right in getting the best out of them all.

For Lee Johnson and his staff this is a very good ‘problem’ to have.

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