'Sunderland are a very good team,' says Bristol City boss after Stadium of Light stalemate

Bristol City boss Nigel Pearson described Sunderland as a ‘very good team’ after holding them to a point at the Stadium of Light.

The draw kept Sunderland in the play-off hunt whilst also extending the Robins’ impressive unbeaten run to 11 matches, even if they needed an injury-time penalty to do it.

Pearson was impressed with what he saw from Sunderland, though, and he thought the two young teams on show put on a good game of football that ultimately produced a fair result.

Speaking about Sunderland after the game, Pearson said: "They're a good team, very good.

"Tony [Mowbray] has his principles that he sticks to and they play an attractive brand of football. We play our own way, we're probably a bit more of a counter-attacking side but we did feel that if we had some spells of possession we could make it more difficult for them, and it turned out to be the case in the second half.

"I thought we gave it away a bit too much in the first half - it's always fascinating when you get two young sides with different styles. They were both trying to win the game, I think you could see that.

"Both teams could have won it. Max made a couple of really important saves for us at 1-0 down because we were pushing players forward at that stage. I thought we deserved something from a good game of football between two promising, young teams.

"We didn't want to come here with the intention of taking a point and the overall game reflected that.

"The important thing for us was that our players got a reward for another positive performance which showed the character of them as players. We showed a resilience that I was very pleased to see."

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