TONY MOWBRAY is ready to turn his attention to the start of the Championship season now that Sunderland have returned from their three-game tour of the United States.

The Black Cats played the final game of their Stateside tour in the early hours of Saturday morning, UK time, with four first-half goals securing a 4-2 victory over North Carolina.

As had been the case in Sunderland’s two previous games in the US, Mowbray selected a mix-and-match starting line-up containing a smattering of senior players mixed with some of their more youthful team-mates.

The pre-season programme will conclude with two domestic friendlies – at home to Real Mallorca on Saturday and away to Hartlepool United the following Tuesday evening – and with the Championship opener against Ipswich Town now less than a fortnight away, Mowbray accepts it is time to start focusing minds.

“We need to start looking ahead now in the next two weeks, in training and particularly in one of the games that we’ve got,” said the Black Cats head coach. “We need to start looking at what looks like our strongest line-up and trying to put that together and doing the work with the team on how we’re going to do it.”

Sunderland won all three of their matches in the US, with victories over San Antonio and New Mexico United preceding the win over North Carolina.

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While none of the opponents were MSL sides, Mowbray feels the experience was still worthwhile and was pleased with his players’ efforts. He was especially happy with the number of goals his side scored, even though he concedes there is still a need to strengthen in the final third, but admits there is room for improvement defensively.

“We managed to win three games,” he said, in an interview broadcast on Sunderland’s YouTube channel. “They’re games I would have expected us to win, and we did.

“We need some help at the top end of the pitch, and yet we score four goals (against North Carolina) and three goals in the other game (against New Mexico). We need to make sure at the other end of the pitch that we stop conceding goals of course, and there’s still some development there to be done. But we haven’t in any game played anywhere near what we would consider to be our strongest team.

“We’ve balanced the team with young players and senior players, so we’ve never played our strongest team, and I would like to think that if we’d have played any of these teams with our strongest team then we’d have been more emphatic.

“But we’ve found a way to win three games and worked in extraordinarily hot conditions, trained in extraordinarily hot conditions and hopefully there’ll be huge benefits at home on the back of this trip.”

Sunderland’s staff and players did a fair amount of travelling, and got the opportunity to experience a number of different cities and states.

“It’s been enjoyable, with different environments,” said Mowbray. “Albuquerque was an eye-opener out in the desert, scorching hot. San Antonio was a beautiful place, and Texas, the Lone Star state, it’s just amazing to be there.

“They were all good, competitive games. Each team had some individuals that could give us some problems. Huge credit to the group, they found a way to win games, and huge credit to the talent at the top end of the pitch to score the goals that we’ve scored.”

Jenson Seelt and Jay Matete both hobbled out of the weekend win over North Carolina, but Mowbray played down the seriousness of their injury issues.

“I don’t think it’s anything too serious,” he said. “I think they’re just knocks. Jenson has had an ankle problem, and every time he gets a knock on it, I think it shakes him up a little bit. But I don’t think there’s a major problem there.

“Jay just took a kick. He scored a great goal (against North Carolina) and was full of energy, breaking forward. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”