One player has received plenty of praise following their performance during Sunderland’s defeat to Birmingham City yesterday.
Sunderland did take the lead thanks to a mistake at the back by the Blues, but the Black Cats were unable to prevent a dramatic comeback from the hosts and eventually returned to Wearside with nothing.
Jack Clarke was unsurprisingly one of the few positives in another underwhelming performance from Sunderland, but there was another name that caught the eye at St Andrews.
Romaine Mundle was handed his first start since joining the club from Standard Liege last month.
The winger had made two cameo appearances so far, but Patrick Roberts’ most recent injury handed him the opportunity to impress from the start.
Mundle was arguably the liveliest of Sunderland’s attackers in the first half and came incredibly close to getting off the mark with a lovely curling effort that forced a good save out of John Ruddy.
While the 20-year-old was less noticeable in the second half before he was replaced by Abdoullah Ba, he still received plenty of praise.
Sunderland Echo journalist Phil Smith gave him the joint-highest rating of the day (7) and wrote: “Had an excellent first half, almost scoring with a good effort and flashing one brilliant cross goal that Burstow should have scored.
“Looks very exciting, though didn’t impact the second half before his withdrawal.”
Should we get excited about Romaine Mundle?
You can certainly tell that Romaine Mundle doesn’t have a great deal of senior football under his belt, but he looks like a player who has bags of potential and could become very important for us – under the right management.
The Tottenham Hotspur academy graduate had 34 touches in the Midlands, completed nine passes, made one successful dribble and had two shots on target. He also won four ground duels and made two successful tackles.
Mundle’s impact was limited but I would argue that was due to the lack of quality around him, but his determination to run at players and get into the box was very promising.
While Roberts will be a big loss, hopefully it will give Mundle the chance at a run in the team and hopefully add a creative spark to our struggling frontline. He would well be the winger we have to rely on when Jack Clarke inevitably gets sold in the summer, so we need to see some fast development if he is to fill his teammate’s boots next season.