Shrews scare should keep us on edge against the Pilgrims – Alex
Alex Neil confessed that he didn't even celebrate Sunderland's late winner against Shrewsbury Town on Friday, so frustrated was he with the way his side had initially gifted up a two-goal advantage in the early stages of the second half.
Once the dust had settled on Nathan Broadhead's late winner, though, he felt there could be one key positive from that spell when his side had been, in his own words, 'beaten up'.
Sunderland now travel to Plymouth Argyle for another crucial fixture in the League One play-off race, and Neil says his side will now fully understand the consequences of not playing at their best.
“The pleasing thing I’ll take from the Shrewsbury game is that we should be going into the Plymouth match on edge, knowing that we can’t drop our standards and that if we have a lapse or we take our foot off the gas, then what happened on Friday is likely to happen again," Neil said.
"That’s the pleasing thing I take down to Plymouth.
"We got the three points (against Shrewsbury), but we still got a wee jag in terms of knowing, ‘Right, we can’t perform like we did in that spell’.
"That’s the one benefit I’ll take from that period.
"We understand the importance of Plymouth, but the last thing I would like to
see is us going down there over-confident, thinking we’ll just go down and play, and then we come up short.
"I don’t expect that to be the case now.
“It should have been a good game [for us].
"We should have gone out [in the second half ], won the battle for the first ten minutes, created another couple of chances, got the third goal, and it should have been a really comfortable game.
"What we’ve had to do now is work extremely hard for that second 45 minutes.
"That’s then going to have an effect [physically] on Monday’s game, but I’m hoping mentally it will have a good effect because it shows us we can’t take our foot off the gas and we need to compete for the full game."
Neil said he would make a late call on Alex Pritchard, who was not fit enough to take his place in the squad against Shrewsbury.
Sunderland dropped to seventh over the weekend due to Sheffield Wednesday’s 3-2 win at MK Dons.