Tony Mowbray: Joe Gelhardt will score goals for Sunderland

Tony Mowbray is confident that Joe Gelhardt will start scoring goals for Sunderland soon despite a slow start in red and white.

Gelhardt has started all three Championship games since his January move from Leeds, although he is yet to make much of an impression.

His performances have been steadily improving, though, with him hitting the bar in the most recent of those games at QPR.

Ideally Sunderland would have liked to have introduced Gelhardt gradually from the bench, but the season-ending injury to Ross Stewart has thrust him into the starting line-up immediately.

Mowbray is sensitive to the challenges that comes with that, and he says his confidence in the player is unaffected by his lack of goals so far.

Speaking about Joe Gelhardt after the 3-0 win against QPR, Mowbray assured fans: "He will score goals for us.

"He's a kid who's played ten minutes here and ten minutes there for Leeds United. He's hardly played 90 minutes, which is why I was taking him off ready for Saturday so he can give us another hour or 70 minutes.

"Yet he's strong as an ox, he works his socks off, and he has a rocket in his left foot. He'll score goals, he's a really talented boy.

"He just needs to understand how our team plays and the demands on him, because he is a young boy who has always been behind [Patrick] Bamford and all these foreign Premier League players at Leeds.

“He was getting ten minutes here and there, so for him to come into our team and be asked to play 70, 80, 90 minutes every three days is a huge ask for the kid."

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