Tony Mowbray admits language barrier is an obstacle for hero Jewison Bennette

Posted Sunday, September 18, 2022 by PA

Sunderland manager Tony Mowbray admitted Jewison Bennette is struggling with the language barrier after he rescued a point in an enthralling 2-2 draw against Watford at Vicarage Road.

Mowbray sent on a quartet of substitutes including Costa Rica international Bennette, who scored his side’s 86th-minute equaliser.

Mowbray said: “Jewi really can’t communicate with anyone at the club yet. He literally finds it difficult to understand anything we tell him. He just smiles at everything.

“That’s the same for a few of the substitutes I put on today. When they stood on a chair and sang their initiation songs, they were all in French, so they got clapped off pretty quickly.

“But as a club, we will help them with that and get them lessons. That’s a lot better for them than sitting in a hotel room and trying to learn it through television.

“The real positive is that the young lads helped us recover from 2-1 down today and get a point, which will help them.

“But if they hadn’t done it in training, I wouldn’t have put them on. You can’t keep knocking them back and leaving them on the bench.”

Mowbray believes that Sunderland’s haul of four points from trips to Reading and Watford in the space of four days will allow him more time to blend the players he has inherited from departed manager Alex Neil into his own side.

He added: “Four points on the road against two teams, one with huge expectations to do really well (in Watford) and one (Reading) which has started the season really well, helps the process of getting where we want to be.”

For Watford’s new manager Rob Edwards, it was third straight match without a win for his team, but the former Forest Green Rovers boss isn’t unduly worried.

He said: “I’m frustrated with the result but overall I saw a lot of positive signs today. For a 20-minute spell after half-time I saw the team that we want to be for 90 minutes.

“If you look at the consistency of the performance, there are lots of good signs. But we need to maintain that consistency within games.

“It’s amazing how goals can change games. We got the second goal and it’s happened a few times now that we’ve scored and then switched off a bit. We want to have that intensity for the full game.

“I can’t fault the efforts and commitment of the players today. What I want us to learn from is that when we’re on top and in the ascendancy, we need to ride that as long as we can.”

Edwards admitted he was disappointed with the manner of Sunderland’s goals. The first was given when Aji Alese’s shot was adjudged to have rolled across the line by goal-line technology, while Watford’s defenders left Sunderland substitute Bennette unmarked for the second.

Edwards added: “I wasn’t sure what the referee had given. I thought it might have been a free-kick because there didn’t seem to be any appeals from the Sunderland players either so I was quite surprised when they ran off and started celebrating.

“With the second one, most goals are conceded from wide areas. There are lots of things we can address and some basics that we need to tighten up on.”