Tony Mowbray gives encouraging injury update and explains his next key Sunderland focus

Tony Mowbray believes Jenson Seelt and Jay Matete have avoided any serious injuries after limping out of Sunderland's 4-2 win over North Carolina.

Both were substituted in the first half, with Seelt appearing to suffer a recurrence of his recent ankle injury after getting through 45 minutes in an encouraging first appearance in a red-and-white shirt.

Matete, meanwhile, was brought off earlier in the game after being on the end of a woeful challenge as he burst forward. The midfielder had opened the scoring just four minutes in and was delivering an exciting display when his night was cut short.

Speaking to safc.com after the game, Sunderland's head coach had a positive update on the pair.

"I don't think they're too serious, I think they're [just] knocks," Mowbray said.

"Jenson has had an ankle and I think when he takes a knock on it, it shakes him up. I don't think there's a major problem there.

"Jay just took a kick. He scored a great goal and was full of energy breaking forward - I'm sure he'll be fine."

Dennis Cirkin is also closing in on a return to fitness in a further boost to Mowbray, having trained with the group on the morning of the game.

Goals from Matete, Danny Batth, Patrick Roberts and Jack Clarke saw Sunderland surge into a 4-0 lead at the interval, but they found life harder in the second half hard as fatigue began to have a visible effect on performance.

Mowbray says returning to Wearside will see the focus switch to working on his XI for the start of the Championship campaign - while he is still hoping for more reinforcements up front in the transfer window.

"We suffered a little bit in the second half but we've managed to win three games," Mowbray said.

"I would expect us to win and we did.

"I've said it before, we need some help at the top end of the pitch and yet we've scored four goals here and three goals the other night. We need to make sure we need to stop conceding at the other end. We've got some development to do there but we obviously haven't played our strongest team yet, each side has been balanced between senior players and younger players. With our strongest team I think these games would have been more emphatic but we've found a way to win three games.

"We've worked and trained hard in extraordinarily hard conditions and hopefully there'll be huge benefits for us back at home. It's been hugely enjoyable, credit to the lads at the top end of the pitch that we've managed to score the goals that we have and I'm delighted for Hemir who scored a couple of goals, because he's got plenty of work to do to get to the level with his fitness.

"We need to start now in the next couple of weeks in training and one of the games that we've got, looking at our strongest team and working on how we're going to do it."