Sunderland boss Graeme Murty issues encouraging Ian Poveda update after Athletic Bilbao appearance

Graeme Murty has been impressed with summer signing Ian Poveda since his arrival during the transfer window.

The former Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal winger signed for the club on a three-year deal with the option of an additional year at the end of July. The 24-year-old Colombia international spent the second half of last season at Sheffield Wednesday and was released by Leeds United this summer.

Poveda made his debut off the bench for Régis Le Bris’ first team against Portsmouth in the Championship recently but has been working with the under-21s to build fitness and played 45 minutes against Athletic Bilbao on Wednesday night.

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The winger started for Sunderland’s under-21s at the Stadium of Light under Murty as the Black Cats drew 2-2 with Athletic Bilbao in the Premier League International Cup. Sunderland named a strong side for the contest with Jewison Bennette, Nazariy Ruysn and Poveda given the chance to top up their match fitness.

“He's good to be around,” Murty said when asked about Poveda after the game. “He's lively he's quite a cheeky chap and he enjoys the ball. You can tell he just wants the ball all the time which is good for our players.

“They know that whatever the situation is 1v2 or 2v1, you can just go and give him the ball because he can manipulate it. He moves the ball well and he's just moving through his progression to get himself to a situation where he feels at the top of his game.”

Sunderland went ahead in the first half against Athletic Bilbao with a fine goal from Harrison Jones but then fell behind before the break after two Bilbao strikes. After the match, Murty revealed he had given his players a stern talking to ahead of the second half, in which his side were able to draw level.

“They were spoken to (at half-time),” Murty said after the game. “I very, very rarely am that explicit. The staff and I are very keen on making sure the players understand problems are going to be coming to them in the game.

“They need to find the solutions, we will encourage them and challenge them to go and find the solutions, we'll show them where to look, we'll show them the process to go through but they then need to go and make sure they execute it and I thought that when we did we had success.

“When we didn't we kept on playing kind of trap passes to jury at the full-back position allowing their press to lock us down well but when we were a little bit braver when we moved the ball centrally I thought that we cut through them well.

“Once again we need to show a more ruthless nature and a more ruthless part to our game where we put those chances away because we're not going to continue to create that number of chances against everyone.”