Tony Mowbray's brilliant demand to Sunderland penalty takers fans will love ahead of Luton Town

Sunderland hold a slender 2-1 lead heading into the second leg of their Championship play-off semi-final tonight.

Should the aggregate scores be level at the end of the game - and additional 30-minutes - then the tie would move to a penalty shoot-out to determine who heads to Wembley for the final.

Have Sunderland been practising their penalties? Yes. And head coach Tony Mowbray has a clear demand for anyone taking one tonight.

“I just left them practising penalties, actually,” said Mowbray at his pre-match press conference.

“I talk to them about how to take a penalty, but I know they’ve all got their own ideas.

“All I would say is that if I’ve got seven people taking a penalty on the training ground, and when I watch them, one of them is one of these guys who takes two steps, stops, looks at the goalie and then side-foots a little soft one into the corner, he’s not taking one when it matters. Apart from that, we’ll have to see.

“I didn’t see the Notts County one, but it’s crept into the game, hasn’t it? These penalties where people just stand, take one step, look at the goalie and try to side-foot it into the corner.

“Listen, if you’re someone like Ivan Toney, and you’ve scored a massive percentage of your penalties doing it that way, then great. But when I watch Ivan Toney, I’d still suggest that when he actually strikes the ball, he still raps it with his side-foot pretty hard.

“It’s not a case of, ‘I’m guessing the goalie is going one way so I’m going to trickle it into the other because I think I’m brilliant’. I’d rather they just whack it into the net.”