Tony Mowbray hails 'wonderful player' as Sunderland impress at Reading

Tony Mowbray has hailed Sunderland midfielder Elliott Embleton as a ‘wonderful player’ after he made a huge impact from the bench against Reading.

Sunderland started the match with top scorer Ross Stewart and they lost Ellis Simms, the squad’s only other striker, to injury after half an hour at the Select Car Leasing Stadium.

Elliott Embleton was the man sent on from the bench, and he made an immediate impact as he assisted two goals within minutes of taking the pitch.

“He’s a wonderful player, Elliot Embleton,” Mowbray told safc.com after the Reading win. “I do talk to him and I say ‘Listen, it’s almost criminal that you're not in this team with your talent but you have to trust us. I can't just put every attacking player in the team because the balance in the team wouldn't be right and we would lose more goals.'

“He understands, he knows that it’s tough for certain players to play every three days and I will sit them on the bench sometimes. He will get his opportunities and, if he's doing well and scoring and creating, then he’ll stay in the team, because I like his talent and I like his confidence in his ability to be honest.”

One player that has been keeping Elliott out of the team of late is Patrick Roberts. He put in a star turn against Reading scoring two goals.

Roberts is a player that has struggled for consistency throughout his career, but Mowbray knows all about the talent he has.

“I’ve got no doubts about Patrick’s quality,” he said. “Patrick was amazing for Celtic and he grew up as a kid at Man City, and it’s great that he's playing for our football club. He has the quality

“We need to keep loving him really, keep hoping he can find the performance level that he found tonight on a regular basis, and if he does then it will be happy days as we move forward for the team.

“He will create and score goals and at his moment, without our main centre forward, we need other people to step up and Patrick did that.”