‘Never too soon’: how Tony Mowbray made Sunderland playoff contenders

Amad Diallo cost Manchester United £25m and Édouard Michut trained alongside Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé at Paris Saint-German, but they receive no special privileges from Tony Mowbray.

The Sunderland manager’s insistence on good habits – on and off the pitch – involves all players, star loanees included, routinely brushing down their boots and hanging them on the correct peg. Instead of allowing dirty shorts and socks to fall to the dressing room floor, they must be picked up and turned inside out, ready for the kit man to place in the washing machine.

Out on the grass, Sunderland’s manager offers constant reminders to Diallo and company to look up, identify space, play on the half turn, run with the ball and deliver it into the right places. “You have to change habits and it’s not always easy,” says Mowbray. “It takes young players time.”

Perhaps, but given that his team have the youngest average age – at 23 – in this season’s Championship and were promoted from League One only last year, they appear to be swift learners.

Sunderland also play the sort of well-structured yet often thrilling football which should offer Luton cause for concern before their visit to the Stadium of Light for Saturday evening’s playoff semi-final first leg.

Rob Edwards, Luton’s manager, may be encouraged by the injuries which have reduced Sunderland’s average height to 5ft 8in and left the former Chelsea and West Ham midfielder Pierre Ekwah as the only fit first-teamer standing over 6ft tall, but their collective ball-playing skills are not to be underestimated.

With Mowbray having finally found a way to compensate for the loss of the Scotland centre-forward Ross Stewart to an achilles rupture in January, his side secured sixth