Sunderland boss delivers verdict on Luke O'Nien red and has clear message after Swansea City defeat

The Black Cats had started strongly but the contest changed when Luke O’Nien was shown a red card for a late challenge on Ollie Cooper. The home side felt they could have had a penalty for a foul on Amad moments earlier, but play was waved on.

Mowbray says he has not watched back either incident but admitted that he feared the worst after O’Nien’s tackle.

The head coach said he wouldn’t be dwelling on what happened afterwards, with Sunderland initially battling back through a Dan Neil goal before falling to a 3-1 defeat.

Mowbray said: “I haven't watched them back. My instant reaction to the red was that the ferocity of the tackle is that he's missed the ball and I think the ferocity of the challenge is what has got him the red card.

"My job today was to try to make sure these players played with intensity against this team that were coming to try to dominate the ball, and I thought we did it brilliantly well for however long it was before the sending off. Luke was stepping out from a central-defensive position into a midfield area, where their number nine had dropped down, and we’d talked about how the centre-halves had to drop in with them because they play in the spaces.

"It was just an overly-aggressive challenge. I’ve told him that. There was no need for that intent, yet you can imagine if he had made real clean contact and the bal had flown 50 yards up the field, the crowd would have roared and it would have kept the momentum going. Ultimately, though, on the back of that decision, the game swung pretty dramatically.

“It's modern-day football and you have to accept it, I think the speed of the challenge is what gets the red card. It was obviously a long afternoon for us after that against a team that plays possession football, it's difficult enough to play with 11-v-11.

“You have to decide how you're going to do it, whether you're going to give the ball up and let them have it and try and defend your box, or whether you're going to leave yourselves exposed where they can pick holes through you.

“We gave it a shot.

“I thought we started the game really well, I thought our possession was good and our ability to take the ball off them was good. I think it would have been a different game if we had kept 11 on the pitch. The game plan went out of the window, it becomes a really difficult day.

“It was a difficult afternoon playing for so long against ten. We're going to put the game in the bin, we're not going to be analysing it. I thought we started the much better of the two teams and I'm sure that we'd have had a good day if we'd kept everyone on the pitch.”

Sunderland are back at the Stadium of Light to face Middlesbrough next Sunday.