What Sunderland fans are saying about Ross Stewart and defeat at Middlesbrough

Boro’s Riley McGree scored the only goal of the game in the 25th minute when he converted Ryan Giles’ low cross.

Sunderland suffered a big injury blow before the match as top scorer Ross Stewart was forced to withdraw from the starting XI due to an injury.

Here’s how some fans reacted:

@MattyCrichton: Hate to be negative, but it is CRIMINAL not recruiting a backup striker when you play two up front.

@Mc2safc: If we ever needed to know why we must keep Stewart in January this is it

@JordanGowling29: Over it already anyway onto Saturday. Still haven't seen a team that are streets ahead of us, the inexperienced side is gonna throw up games like that. We will be more than fine

@TommyBoyd97: Disappointing performance. First half didn’t get going at all. Improvement second half without overly threatening. Middlesbrough finished top 6 last season and still more than competed with them.

@sniff91: We were incredibly lucky Stewart stayed injury free last season. Only other choice we had was Broadhead and he didn't even play in half of our games. It's been a problem for three windows and we've been getting away with it until tonight.

@DavidHindmarsh7: What a surprise, no Stewart and we don’t compete anywhere near as well. When you play with Evans, Neil, Gooch, Clarke & Pritchard, you need two powerful strikers

@Ian_Crow3: Poor from us. Didn't really have much going on in the final third. Rosco massive miss, different game with him. Poor as that was, just gotta dust ourselves off and move. Not a result to get upset over, just another team. Not a derby as they want us to believe it is.

@shujio_: Disappointing result tonight. We huffed and puffed but we couldn’t quite create enough opportunities to equalise. Didn’t have the composure.

@Philip_RJ89: Really frustrating game, that. Second half we could’ve played for three hours and not scored. Plenty of possession, zero cutting edge. Didn’t think Boro were brilliant, but they did a job on us. Fair play.