How Manchester United loanee Amad helped Sunderland beat Birmingham and the challenge facing Tony Mowbray

When matches are tight, it often comes down to a mistake, lapse in concentration or moment of quality to decide the result. And at Birmingham on Friday night it was Amad who produced the match-winning contributions.

The Manchester United loanee produced a dazzling piece of skill, with several opposition players around him, to set up Ellis Simms for the opening goal in a 2-1 win for the Black Cats.

Three minutes after half-time the 20-year-old scored his third goal in five matches, after cutting in from the right and curling an excellent shot into the top corner.

Amad’s performances in recent weeks have been so impressive that Patrick Roberts, who Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray described as one of the best players in the Championship a few weeks ago, started on the bench at St Andrew’s.

With both players impressing on the right flank, where they are effective cutting inside onto their favoured left foot, Mowbray will now look for ways to fit both players into his side.

While Roberts is a more direct runner in possession, Amad has shown he is more likely to drift infield to try and link up play, as shown by the player’s heatmap against Birmingham.

Yet despite his two match-winning involvements, Amad wasn’t involved in as much build-up play as in previous weeks, while still completing 17 of his 19 attempted passes according to Wyscout.

This was an evening where Sunderland recorded just 41% possession and had to defend for long spells.

After the match Mowbray also pointed out Amad’s physical data, and the player’s work off the ball didn’t go unnoticed either.

The forward’s ability to help Sunderland break forward quickly was certainly an important asset, which came to fruition for the second goal.

And when asked about Amad’s assist for the Black Cats’ opener, Simms said: “It was magnificent. His low centre of gravity, just came out with the ball. With his vision he just saw me pull off and then gave me an opportunity to score.”

The challenge for Amad will now be to pick the right options and showcase his talent on a regular basis.

We’ve certainly seen signs of that over the last few weeks.