Regis Le Bris praised the quality of teenager Jobe Bellingham after watching him fire Sunderland to Sky Bet Championship victory for the second time in a week.
The 19-year-old younger brother of England and Real Madrid star Jude, struck 18 minutes from time to seal a 2-1 win over Norwich at the Stadium of Light and keep the Black Cats firmly in the race for automatic promotion.
Boss Le Bris said: “Jobe is so powerful. He wants to affect the game and he has the good quality to do it, so it’s not a big surprise for us.
“But you have to do it on the pitch and he did very well today again to score the second goal.”
Bellingham’s 72nd-minute strike proved decisive after Dan Ballard had cancelled out Anis Slimane’s opener a week after the defender had scored his side’s first and the midfielder the winner in a 3-2 comeback victory at Swansea.
Le Bris was not happy with his side’s first-half display, but grateful for the character they displayed to fight their way back once again.
He said: “The character of the team was very good, even if during half-time we were not happy with the way we played in the first half. It was very clear, the lack of quality to play the football we want to play.
“But it was clear in our mind, so rather than searching for bad reasons, it was clear, it was about us and only us. We tried to do a better second half and the character was here even if the weather, the conditions, the opponent created many unstable situations.”
Norwich counterpart Johannes Hoff Thorup, who revealed he had spent a significant period of time with referee Leigh Doughty and his team of officials discussing a series of decisions he felt had not gone the Canaries’ way, was frustrated by the loss of another game from a winning position after last weekend’s 2-1 home defeat by Burnley.
He said: “The first goal they score, it’s all right, we can deal with that. One-one after 60 minutes, that’s all right for us, we can still create good moments, we can still push a little bit towards the end.
“But definitely, we need to improve in scoring that second goal and making sure that we give ourselves a better position in situations than only being 1-0 up because it can change so quickly, and you can see that in more or less all the other games in the league as well.”
