Tony Mowbray voiced his frustration at Sunderland’s inability to kill off ten-man Swansea City – and admits the Black Cats look like they don’t know how to score from the centre of the pitch. Mowbray said it was ‘total domination’ by his side at the Liberty Stadium, where they played for an hour with a man advantage after Swansea’s on-loan Arsenal midfielder Charlie Patino was sent off for a second bookable offence.

But he felt Sunderland played better when both teams had 11 men, before Swansea sat back and put players behind the ball in an attempt to hang on to a point. Sunderland hit the woodwork three times but could not find a way through and they ended up having to settle for a goalless draw.

“I think we’re all frustrated,” said Mowbray. “We were at our best in the first 30 minutes when it was 11-vs-11 – we should have been three-up really, we had a one-on-one, Dan Neil should have swept one in from the penalty spot when it was cut back to him…

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“It’s frustrating when you play against ten men and you don’t win the football match. But, credit to them [Swansea], they worked hard, put their bodies on the line, they defended well, and they will be happy with a point.

“It’s not every week you play against ten men, and they worked really hard and got lots of men behind the ball, they blocked it, they headed it out, they defended really well. We have a right to be really disappointed that we didn’t score.”

Of the performance in general, he added: “I’m only disappointed with the fact we didn’t put the ball in their net. The performance level was total domination, in my opinion, but we have to score – it’s no good keeping the ball, I’m not interested in possession stats, I’m interested in the ball going in their net.

“We have inexperienced strikers and, while we are not short on goals, invariably it is not the strikers who are scoring it’s the full-back or the centre-half or the midfield player. We are struggling to find the formula of [getting goals from] a centre-forward.

“I put it down to inexperience of knowing how to find space in the box, really. The best strikers find space, they know when to stand still, they know when to run to the near post, stop, back off a few yards, and then just head it in.

“We’re trying to work on it with these young players, but this was just a frustrating day where we couldn’t find the answer. We hit the woodwork a few times, we had some amazing blocks on the line, the keeper one great save, but we have to accept that we weren’t good enough to score.

“We look like we don’t know how to score a goal from the central areas of the pitch. It’s a frustration for us but we have to keep working with them and keep making these young players better.

Swansea offered minimal threat and yet Sunderland could even have lost the game when Luke O’Nien conceded a needless penalty for holding Liam Cullen at a corner kick on the stroke of half-time. But Anthony Patterson bailed him out, saving Jamal Lowe’s spot-kick.

Mowbray said: “It was a penalty from a corner, somebody pulling somebody, it wasn’t a chance they had created and then a foul because someone had gone past somebody in the box. It was stupidity, probably, although, saying that, I haven’t seen it back.

“I think referees have to be careful about pulls or blocks, because you could give penalties for that in every game for people holding people. I was frustrated that they even got a corner, to be honest, because they shouldn’t have been that far up the pitch.”