TONY Mowbray felt his Sunderland side got what they deserved against Norwich City, and was particularly pleased with his side's show of character in recovering from a goal down to end their winless stretch.

Hwang Ui-Jo put the Canaries ahead against the run of play at the midway stage of the first half but Sunderland were in front at the break thanks to goals from Trai Hume and Dan Neil, before Jack Clarke wrapped up the points from the spot with his ninth goal of the season 10 minutes from time.

Mowbray said: "I think it was the right result for the way the game went.

"It felt a little bit here we go again when they scored, I don't think they'd been in our half up until that point and yet we're a goal behind.

"We showed great character to get in front before half time, with some really good, positive front-foot play. It was important for us, I thought it was harsh on us to have lost three games - there were some okay performances in there.

"You have to take it on the chin when you lose and what was important for us was to keep the confidence up. We showed them a lot of clips of the Leicester game and the rewards of playing on the front foot. We did that well today, suffocated them for long spells and it wasn't really until the last 15 that they asked questions of us, and then in that period we could have scored more goals on the break."

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Despite dominating early on, Sunderland fell behind in controversial fashion. A forward pass was aimed in the direction of Gabriel Sara, who was clearly offside, with Pierre Ekwah stopping in expectation of the assistant raising his flag. But Sara didn't touch the ball and allowed Kellen Fisher to overlap and tee up Hwang.

Mowbray said:  "I had a chat with Pierre, not an angry one, but just a chat about what happened.

"He's waiting for the linesman to put his flag up and the full back comes bombing past. He wasn't offside and he got caught. For me, it's fine, it's a lesson.

"I didn't knock too much confidence and belief, I think they felt they were on top and dominating. We did a lot of work on breaking down deep blocks and we did. It would be nice for our strikers to score, but we got it done. We deserved it, our performances have warranted wins and today it definitely did."

Sunderland now have a full week to prepare for next Saturday's trip to Swansea City.

Mowbray said: "I'm looking forward to having a week now to prepare for the next game.

"I was pretty confident that the players were still confident. I talk to our analysts a lot and I wanted lots of positive clips from the games we didn't win, to make sure they didn't forget that this is a good team and we're going to win a lot of games. Yes we have to learn from defeats, but we want them to stay positive."