TONY MOWBRAY'S touchline demeanour told its own story during Sunderland’s defeat in South Wales.

The tone was set for a frustrating afternoon when the Black Cats manager was left holding his head in his hands when Danny Baath missed a sitter in the opening exchanges of a sun-kissed contest.

Mowbray would have been forgiven for lamenting the absence of injured strikers Ross Stewart and Ellis Simms because any forward worth their salt would have converted the close-range opportunity.

It was as if Mowbray knew what was coming and in-form Swansea duly showed Baath how it should be done in the penalty box minutes later when Ollie Cooper opened the scoring with a deflected shot in the 13th minute.

While Swansea manager Russell Martin jumped for joy with his backroom staff, Mowbray’s head momentarily sank before he took a sip of water and began plotting a way back for his team.

Despite the early setback, the former Boro boss has been around the block enough times to have still fancied his team’s chances as long as could hold firm against a Swansea side high on confidence following three straight wins.

And there was plenty of hope that his team would find a way through the Swansea defences as they pressed and probed and worked hard to stop their opponents playing out from the back.

With their four-man central midfield, the hosts looked comfortable in possession to such an extent that BBC radio pundit Gary Bennett told listeners that “Swansea looked like Brazil because they had so much space”.

Mowbray’s team were very much up against it but there were just three minutes of stoppage time that Sunderland had to navigate to get to half-time for a re-jig and refreshments but they were only able to hold out for one of those minutes after being out-thought at a set-play.

Harry Darling headed in at a set-piece right in front of the 1,700 travelling fans to leave a clearly deflated Mowbray again holding his head in his hands following a set-piece lapse his team had been preparing for.

“It was a really poor goal from a set-play that we'd talked about because we knew they block the last man and run in behind,” Mowbray, a centre-back with Middlesbrough and Celtic in his playing days, said afterwards.

“It was a basic and elementary goal that we’d looked at and worked at and it shouldn’t have happened but what was pleasing was the reaction to adversity and the way we wrestled the game back from them.”

Mowbray deserves plenty of credit for tweaking his tactics and lifting his players during the interval when many fans would have thought the game had already been won and lost.

It was his decision to deploy Jack Clarke in the central attacking zone rather than left flank “to upset their rhythm and find a way to disrupt” their opponents that quickly paid dividends.

He took advantage of Swansea hesitancy to race through, showing impressive close control before beating Steven Benda with an exquisite low, angled finish in the 51st minute.

It was a touch of class that changed the mood on and off the field of play but despite outplaying Swansea for the majority of the second half, that was the Wearsiders’ solitary reward.

While Swansea hearts would have been in mouths for much of the second half Sunderland struggled to overcome the lack of a recognised target-man, which meant that they are even denied the luxury of adopting desperate long-ball tactics.

The frustration got to Sunderland captain Corry Evans who picked up his fifth yellow card of the season and will miss his first game of the campaign when Wigan head to the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

While Clarke continued to threaten, Sunderland goalkeeper Anthony Patterson again proved himself to be a formidable last line of defence as he expertly denied Jay Fulton and Joel Piroe which ensured Mowbray’s team pushed high-flying opponents to the very end.