Stoke City boss delivers honest verdict on what went wrong in Sunderland defeat

Stoke City boss Steven Schumacher warned his players that they have to improve in the final third after the 3-1 defeat to Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Saturday afternoon.

Schumacher's side created a number of big chances throughout the game but it was Sunderland who made the most of their opportunities, ultimately running out comfortable winners thanks to goals from Mason Burstow, Abdoullah Ba and Pierre Ekwah.

Jenson Seelt's own goal gave the visitors a chance of getting something out the game and while pleased with his team's general performance, Schumacher was frustrated with their play in the final third.

"It's not a difficult performance to summarise, it's easy: we played well but we haven't scored," he said.

"That's quite simple. We played well, got into good areas, controlled large parts of the game but we weren't good enough in the final third. For me, that's simple. It feels like I'm saying the same things as I said last week. Again, we played well, we controlled large parts of the game, got into some really good areas, created loads of good chances, and we are not clinical enough.

"We haven't got that belief at the minute when we get into the box, into the final third, that we're going to score. To miss the target as often as we did today with those kind of chances is not acceptable. Then they punished us with their moments and their quality players have made more of it than we did.

"I think before all three of their goals we had big chances right before all of them and were sucker punched. It's disappointing and I'm obviously frustrated. We've just got to keep going.

I think defensively we're ok. We got caught on two counter attacks for their second and third goals. They break on us and score. What I wasn't happy about was our recovery runs. We were too slow, too many people looking backwards on the game when they're in our box so that's not good enough.

"But overall we limited them to few clear cut opportunities or big moments but when they got their chances they had more quality than we did."

Schumacher said he expected to see an improvement both in training and on the pitch in the weeks ahead: "I've just said it's not good enough that we don't hit the target enough. The only way we can get better is by working on the training ground and taking it seriously because I think earlier on in the season, creating opportunities at this club was difficult. Since we've been here, that's changed. We've created a lot of good chances, got into good areas.

"Strikers have got to expect that they are going to get those chances, and midfield players too, and we have to make it count. So we have to concentrate every single day when we do it in training, when we work on things. We have to take it seriously because if you don't, when you come into the stadiums when the pressure is on, you're not going to get it right either."