TONY MOWBRAY was delighted with his Sunderland players’ all-round performance as they lost 1-0 at Championship leaders Leicester City – but admitted a succession of missed chances left him wondering about what might have been.

The Black Cats were beaten by James Justin’s 12th-minute header as Leicester extended their lead at the top of the Championship table to eight points.

However, the Wearsiders created a number of good opportunities with Jack Clarke, Patrick Roberts and Jobe Bellingham all failing to make the most of decent openings.

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Their best chance went begging with seven minutes remaining when substitute Abdoullah Ba blazed over from close range.

Mowbray said: “"It's not a surprise to me that played well, we believed we could come here and win this game.

“We missed some really good chances. (Anthony) Patterson made two really good saves and they hit the post, I get that. They're top-quality players and have a Premier League budget, we have a really young team.

“But I asked them to go and challenge themselves, see if they want to play in the Premier League one day - how will you get on against a lot of these players?

“I thought we competed really well, just probably lacked the composure we needed at the top end of the pitch to give us what we maybe deserved from the game.”

With Mason Burstow once again failing to open his account in a Sunderland shirt, and Luis Hemir also drawing a blank as a late substitute, the Black Cats are still waiting for their first goal from a striker this season.

However, Mowbray insists he is not worried about his side’s goalscoring statistics.

He said: “It's not really a concern, if that's the level we are going to play at every week we're going to win enough games.

"We should highlight the energy of our team and the problems we caused the opposition and the chances we were able to create, we just need to improve the end product.”