BACK PROBLEM
Ref’s calls wreck Mowbray return as old team go top
BLACKBURN scored two controversial goals to go top of the Championship and give Tony Mowbray a miserable return to Ewood Park.
Mowbray was back for the first time since a successful fiveand-a-half year reign ended in the summer and the Sunderland boss left deeply frustrated at referee Craig Pawson.
Mowbray felt Sunderland should have had a penalty seconds before Ben Brereton Diaz’s opener and replays showed Scott Wharton was offside when he headed home Blackburn’s second.
Jon Dahl Tomasson’s side rattled off a fourth successive home win in front of his 82-year-old dad, who had flown over from Denmark.
Tomasson is building on the foundations laid by Mowbray to make Rovers promotion contenders again, despite operating on a shoestring.
The first big controversy came when Pawson ignored Sunderland’s penalty appeals after Ryan Hedges caught Jack Clarke’s standing foot.
The incredulous Mowbray stood with his arms outstretched and seconds later Rovers broke upfield to score a beauty on 32 minutes.
Sam Gallagher’s shot rebounded off Danny Batth to Brereton Diaz and he bent home a superb left-foot curler from 20 yards for his eighth league goal of the season. There was an irony about Blackburn’s second on 49 minutes when Hedges, who got away with the penalty appeal in the first half, was adjugded to have been fouled.
Hedges swung in a brilliant free-kick and Wharton’s header from two yards out stood, even though he was just offside.
A ball boy got involved in a tussle with the Wearsiders when they tried to retrieve the ball as tempers frayed.
BLACKBURN (3-4-1-2): Kaminski 7; Carter 6, Hyam 6, S Wharton 7; Hedges 7, Morton 6, Garrett 6, Brittain 6; Szmodics 7 (Dolan 78, 6); Brereton Diaz 8, Gallagher 6 (Vale 78, 6). Goals: Brereton Diaz 32, Wharton 49.
SUNDERLAND (4-3-2-1): Patterson 6; O’Nien 7, Batth 7, Alese 5 (Hume 73, 6), Cirkin 5; Neil 6 (Diallo 64, 6), Evans 6 (Michut 81, 5), Embleton 6 (Ba 64, 6); Roberts 6, Pritchard 7 (Bennette 64, 6); Clarke 6.