What Tony Mowbray said about Ross Stewart's Sunderland contract, Wigan Athletic and Ellis Simms

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Tony Mowbray’s pre-match press conference ahead of Thursday’s match against Wigan.

The Black Cats boss will be speaking to the media at 1pm and we’ll have live updates from the Academy of Light.

Stick around and refresh the page for the latest SAFC news.

Before we hear from Mowbray we’ll run through the latest Sunderland team news,

The Black Cats will be without several first-team players for their games against Wigan and Blackpool over the next few days.

Aji Alese missed the win over Blackburn on Boxing Day with an ankle injury and, while it’s not thought to be a serious issue, is likely to remain sidelined until the New Year.

Dennis Cirkin (knee) and Lynden Gooch (hamstring) were both forced off against Blackburn and are also likely to miss the next two matches.

Danny Batth and Alex Pritchard are also doubts for the games against Wigan and Blackpool, while Elliot Embleton remains out with a long-term injury.

We’ll get a further injury update from Mowbray later today.

“It’s good to win football matches and I personally don’t take any more pleasure for beating a club I was at for five and a half years.

“I worked very closely with a lot of those players and people at that club. They are doing really well and hope they can continue to do well.

“It was important for us to get a win with a big crowd there and we have probably dropped too many points at home this year.

“It was important to get three points. Happy enough and now we have to back it up with some more points on the road.”

“I think he understood. I didn’t see a real frustration with Ellis when I told him he was going to start on the bench.

“He had played just about 90 minutes every game for that period when he got himself fit, four five, six weeks because Ross has been unavailable.

“I think as soon as we felt Ross was ready, rather than playing them both straight away we felt it made sense to give him a breather, knowing that he was going to come on and hopefully do what he did

“I think that’s important a little bit of rotation with the strikers, it’s something that we have to look at in the second half of the season.

“If they are both firing and scoring at the pitch at the same time we hope that can continue as well.”

“If there is interest it doesn’t come to me.

“I’m anticipating Ross just to enjoy his football. He’s been out four months and just wants to play, score and do well.

“I’m pretty sure that will be the case. There’s no real emergency around his contractual situation, he still has 18 months on to go.

“I’m sure those conversations are ongoing. Ross Stewart should just be ready to play and enjoy, that’s his personality, he’s a good lad and it’s great that he’s come back and hit the ground running.”

“I think we just have to be competitive in every game because our support base and everyone at the club demands that.

“You still lose games when you are competitive and there have been a few occasions where we probably haven’t quite got what we deserved in some games.

“Let’s just keep working hard for 90 minutes and as I’ve stressed a few times let’s find the consistency levels where we can put together just more than 45 minutes.

“We have had a few times this year where we’ve been good first half and not so good the other half.

“It’s very difficult to play well for 90 minutes, the other team usually has a spell where they put the ball in the box and create chances.

“The key is to be resilient and see those moments out and when our chances come try and take them.”

“I think Wigan actually beat Blackburn at Wigan and were on a good run

“There are no easy games in this league. I appreciate you can look at the stats and say they haven’t won many games recently.

“They have been on a difficult run and just changed their manager recently, the manager hasn’t won a game yet.

“I see them as real motivating aspects of a football team. The manager will be driving his team and if he’s got the players onboard they will be desperate to do well for him.

“We have to be ready for a team full of adrenaline, full of desire and be professional to work really hard and try to see their threats off and bring our own quality.

“I think the most dangerous thing is thinking we have done well against a team sitting third in the league and now we are playing a team who have had some difficulties in recent weeks.

“The danger is falling into that trap of not bringing your A game and that’s what we’ll guard against and be ready for a tough test.”

That brings us to the end of the broadcast section of the press conference but Mowbray has also spoken to the written press including our SAFC writer Phil Smith.

You can find more from the Black Cats boss, as well as build-up to Thursday’s game, over on the SAFC section of the Echo website.