Tony Mowbray has suggested that an underperforming Sunderland star could return to the starting line-up soon.
Speaking after the defeat to Huddersfield Town, the Black Cats boss admitted that Luis Hemir ‘needs an opportunity’.
Hemir joined Sunderland from Benfica in the summer, having made a total of 31 appearances across the B team and their U19s – scoring eleven goals.
The striker featured heavily in Sunderland’s pre-season campaign and looked very impressive, though was still expected to be slowly eased into the first team if the Black Cats were to add an experienced forward to their ranks.
However, a lack of transfer business meant that Hemir was immediately handed his first start for the club in their opening day defeat to Ipswich Town.
The 20-year-old’s performance was far from what we had seen during pre-season and was replaced after an hour. Hemir hasn’t started a Championship match since, and has been limited to 185 minutes of game time.
Tony Mowbray has already suggested Hemir might not be good enough, however he could now be prepared to give him a second chance to impress.
When asked about the trip to Millwall, Mowbray said (as per Sunderland Echo): “It depends who is fit and available.
“Nazariy Rusyn was injured tonight with a groin strain. We’ve talked about Luis Hemir as someone who needs to get up to speed. I think he needs an opportunity, I think that’s at home against the right team.
“He doesn’t knock on my door every day asking why he’s not in the team wanting to know why he’s not playing because I think he can feel it in training, he has to get his aerobic capacity up so he can fit in the team.”
Did Sunderland write Hemir off too soon?
I think Tony Mowbray made a huge mistake in handling Luis Hemir the way they did following his debut in July.
The Sunderland boss very quickly gave up on Hemir and went onto play for the U21 side, despite barely even having the chance to kickstart his career.
The youngster has barely played senior football and has moved over to a completely new country where he doesn’t speak the language, so we certainly can’t expect him to bag a hat-trick in his first game.
Hemir will definitely be low on confidence now and the added pressure of no goals for our four strikers won’t be helping.
Hopefully Mowbray does give him a start at some point, but it is starting to feel like our forwards are really going to struggle to do much when the rest of the team can’t give them the service they need.