Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray explains his key selection decisions at Burnley

Mowbray opted to drop Edouard Michut and Abdoullah Ba to the bench, with Amad also not brought into the starting XI despite his cameo against Luton Town.

The Sunderland head coach revealed that the Manchester United loanee, who had been away with the Ivory Coast, had not been able to do any training before the game as a result of it being brought forward to a Friday night kick-off for TV coverage.

All three made an impact from the bench as Sunderland dug in to secure a more than creditable draw at Turf Moor, becoming the first team to keep a clean sheet at the ground this season in the process.

With Dennis Cirkin making a successful return to action as a late substitute, it means Mowbray's hand should be stronger when Hull City visit the Stadium of Light on Good Friday even though his list of long-term absentees remains significant.

“Amad arrived at the hotel at 7pm on Thursday night," Mowbray said.

"He came straight from Manchester when his flight got in. He hasn’t trained with anybody all week, so we had no idea what his physical condition is.

"We would obviously want to start with Amad, but we couldn’t. It would have been the wrong thing to do. Trai is the only player who was away with internationals who played, and that was because he hadn’t had any minutes for Northern Ireland. He came back and was pretty fresh. Obviously, Dan Ballard’s a big miss to this team, who’s going to be out for a few weeks, and Jewison Bennette has obviously dislocated his shoulder.

"The other two lads who played two games in southern Spain, in the Marbella area, they played a lot of football, two and a bit games. They’ve both been busy, so they sat on the bench, even though they came back on Thursday. The team picked itself really because none of those lads could play, they’d been away from the club all week."

Amad and Michut in particular will be strong contenders to return to the starting XI next week.