Difficult to believe he’s at Sunderland – Tony Mowbray hails Amad Diallo

Sunderland head coach Tony Mowbray hailed Amad Diallo as “an amazing footballer” after he was the hero of his side’s 2-1 win against Birmingham at St. Andrew’s.

The on-loan Manchester United winger set up forward Ellis Simms, signed on a temporary basis from Everton, to give Sunderland the lead in the 25th minute.

Diallo beat Dion Sanderson and Jobe Bellingham and even continued his run after being briefly grounded before putting Simms through to drill home powerfully on the angle.

Diallo then scored a beauty in the 49th minute. He cut inside Auston Trusty before bending a superb left-foot curling shot into the opposite corner of the net.

Substitute Lukas Jutkiewicz ensured a grandstand finish when he swept home Emmanuel Longelo’s cross but Mowbray was full of praise for Ivory Coast international Diallo, who cost United £20million from Atalanta.

“Diallo is an amazing footballer,” said Mowbray.

“He’s come to the party. I think there’s an understanding that this kid has real talent and deserves to be well respected within the team.

“Someone told me he cost £37m and I find it difficult to believe he’s at Sunderland.

“For me to pick Diallo ahead of Patrick Roberts when I’d said he was the best player in the league is big.

“But Diallo’s training has been unbelievable, how fast he is, how direct he is and how good he is with the ball.

“You look at his physical data in every match in the last three or four games, he’s been the highest distance covered, the highest sprint distance covered, the highest high intensity energy runs.

“He scored a wonderful goal but we see him do that every day.”

Mowbray also saluted Sunderland’s fans after 2,600 made the long journey to the West Midlands.

“It’s good on a night like this where you can give them something, when they’re driving home for four hours that they’re going home happy,” he added.

Birmingham were playing their third game in a week and head coach John Eustace admitted it might have been a match too far for his players.

“We just gave two really sloppy goals away and it was just a bit too much to get back into the game,” he said.

“Tuesday’s game (a 2-2 comeback draw against Millwall) took a lot out of the boys, that’s why I had lots of energy coming off the bench.

“On another day in that last half an hour we could have scored a couple of goals.”

Eustace still believed Blues had enough of the game to have earned a point.

“We had some good chances in the first half with Troy Deeney hitting the bar and Scott Hogan’s one-on-one chance,” he said.

“The lads showed great togetherness and desire in that second half when we could quite easily have nicked a point.”