Sunderland boss reflects on his midweek Patrick Roberts call and hints at Coventry City return

Mowbray said he had no regrets over his decision to take Roberts out of the starting XI for that game, despite the obvious impact he made when he came on later in the game.

Sunderland eventually fell to a disappointing 2-1 defeat but Mowbray says he has to be careful with his players, who will play their seventh fixture of the month this weekend.

Roberts had started every one of those games previous to the midweek fixture, and Mowbray said his talented winger was at risk of injury as a result of his workload.

He looks certain to reprise his productive partnership with Amad as Sunderland look to get back to winning ways.

"They play just about every week but as I've said, it would have been Patrick's seventh game in a short space of time," Mowbray said.

"I drive Patrick really hard, I'm constantly on at him because of the responsibilities he has off the ball, and he's working extremely hard to fulfil them. I'm not sure something that he's always had to do, and I felt that he'd looked a bit drained and tired [off the ball]. "I felt he needed a little breather - because the scenario running through my mind is that for the greed of wanting to always play them, you could lose them for the rest of the season because they snap a hamstring or something, because they push too hard and their bodies can't quite get there.

"I felt that we should have been able to get through, we made three changes a week earlier at QPR and got through.

"Patrick is an amazing talent and I shouldn't ever really consider not picking him, but because of the cup replay we just haven't had a breather.

"He made a huge impact when he came on, as he does most games. Hopefully the hour or so off the pitch we had, we'll see the benefit this weekend and hopefully he'll contribute to a win against Coventry. No football team is about 11 or 12 players, you have to trust your squad of 20 or however many it may be.

"I felt it was the right thing to do and it's easy in hindsight to say, 'look at the impact he made when he came on'," Mowbray added.

"I accept that. We made the decision for the right thing and you live by the result.

"I've got no regrets, I would love to pick Patrick and Amad for ninety minutes every game... Danny Batth came off in that game on Tuesday as well, I have to be careful with these players who are playing just about every minute.

"If we can get through Saturday it's then less so after that, because it's mainly one game per week. You can then rest, recover and then prepare for the game. We're talking about humans, not robots."