Tony Mowbray delivers his verdict on Sunderland's brilliant win and the key to it

Sunderland boss Tony Mowbray praised his side for coming through a difficult week as they secured an emphatic win against Southampton on Saturday afternoon.

A number of Mowbray's side were the subject of transfer speculation this week but they came together to produce an excellent performance against one of the teams heavily favoured for promotion.

Mowbray named an unchanged XI for the side, confident that their performances were strong. He praised his side for their work out of possession in a rare game where the opposition dominated the ball.

"I think the result is important for the team and the spirit," Mowbray said.

"It's been a tough week in terms of the build up, there's been a lot of speculation about our players and even in training yesterday, there's rumours about clubs looking. It disrupts young footballers and I can see them talking. And yet they showed great professionalism today, we turned up and did what we hoped we could do.

"I'm pleased for them all, Rigg to get his goal and Jewi to get that assist. I tell them to go and express themselves, be positive and take people on. I tell them not worry about losing the ball, football should be about individuals and flair.

"I'm happy, I'm happy for the fans who came today.

"I looked at the back of the programme when I get in today and for them you're just seeing name after name of really experienced, high-quality players. I know they've lost a lot of players and like us, they'll have to settle the group down.

"I went with the same team because I genuinely feel the team is doing alright, and the data I study tells me that.

"I talked a lot about this week about intensity this week because they are a pretty unique team, Russell's teams are and we found that last year when we went down to ten men and we couldn't get the ball off them. It's about the press and how many you commit to try and win it back, but then having enough mobility and speed in the team to cause problems when they leave those spaces.

"I think we got that right today. It's one of those, they've had a lot more possession and yet we've scored five goals. There's no one way to play. We want to dominate the ball and control the match but we also work really hard on stopping the transitions and stopping the team breaking on us, and filling the spaces when we lost the ball."

Mowbray is looking forward to having some extra attacking options after the international break following a busy deadline day that saw four players depart and four players arrive.

Mason Burstow, Timothee Pembele, Adil Aouchiche and Nazariy Rusyn should all start to come into contention after the international break.

"I've been given some extra tools, we've got some attacking players and they might be watching today wondering how they get into the team. That's OK, because competition is the main driver and motivator of all footballers."