TONY Mowbray admitted he was confused by how defender Dennis Cirkin found himself in the position to score two goals for Sunderland at West Brom - but the head coach wasn't complaining!

Cirkin was Sunderland's hero as the defender popped up with a second half brace to lift the Black Cats into the top six of the Championship with a come from behind victory at the Hawthorns.

Sunderland trailed at the break after a controversial penalty in first half stoppage time but came roaring back after the break, with Cirkin the unlikely hero.

Mowbray said: "Dennis is a really powerful aggressive guy, you just need to keep pushing him.

"He's undoubtedly got Premier League qualities, he's a powerful unit and can nick goals for you.

"Why he was in the box I'm not sure, I was saying to the coaches, why on earth is Dennis Cirkin in the box, he's playing left centre half of a back three and ends up in the box twice and scores two goals.

"It's credit to the bravery of the team, he played it forward, kept going and joined in."

With Danny Batth last week becoming the latest key Sunderland player to be ruled out for the rest of the season, Mowbray was forced into a defensive rethink at West Brom, playing Trai Hume, Luke O'Nien and Cirkin in a back three.

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And after some "sleepless nights" for the coaching staff in the run up to the game, he was delighted with the way his backline performed.

He said: "I think most impressive was denying them scoring a goal from a set play.

"With a total lack of physicality in our team, our goalkeeper coach spent Alessandro Barcherini spent sleepless nights this week preparing the team for how we were going to stop them.

"We changed our whole system. We normally have a bit of man marking and a bit of zonal stuff. We went total zonal this week with one player marking Semi Ajayi. Everyone else just filled the middle of the goal and tried to make first contact.

"I thought we did amazingly well. Apart from the start of both halves, the first half they looked controlled and had a plan, and the start of the second they were really aggressive and put us on the back foot.

"Generally in the game we managed to control it and find the spaces to play. I thought we were brave and over the 90 minutes deserved to win the football match.

"I said to the lads at half-time we always score. I was trying to give them confidence that we will score.

"Generally it's great to see a lot of young lads playing football the right way. I thought we played well and controlled long spells and I thought over the balance of the game deserved to win."