Paul Heckingbottom on Sunderland

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00:00Listen, they were reliant on Jack Clarke, he did fantastic for them in terms of goals,

00:05assists, threats, but I think there's a bit more balance to them, certainly without the

00:10ball. Yeah, so I think there's a real good balance there, team threats off both sides,

00:16it's not as if they're over-reliant on one player, which means then the opposition would

00:20set up to deal with one threat, that type of thing. And I think they've had a better

00:26balance without the ball, and that's been shown in the goals against as well, so that's

00:30why they're up there on merit, scoring lots of goals, keeping lots of clean sheets, and

00:37a real clear way that they want to play. There'll be a lot of eyes on Alan Brown, obviously,

00:42great servant for this club, what have you seen of him there, what kind of role is he

00:45doing, is he a bit of everything? He's a versatile player. Yeah, he's been used in different

00:48positions, he would have wanted to play more, but he's in a team that's playing really well

00:52and he played at the weekend, so he'll have wanted to play more, but when the team's doing

00:57really well, you've got to bide your time. What have you made of their manager, did you

01:00know anything about him before? No, so I've seen a bit of them this season, so it's the

01:07first time I've watched any of his teams and how they play and how they perform. But it's

01:14evident that, listen, I think Sunderland have another recruit, their manager's coached in

01:19a way that, look at their style and their personality and do the fit how we want to

01:26play, they'd say they've got it wrong a couple of times, which has been evident in moving

01:29people on. However, they're obviously really sure that this manager wants to play the same

01:37way or fits idealistically into how they see the game or they want to develop players and

01:43so far they've improved, right? Yeah, there's no Bellingham, there's a recent suspension,

01:47do you think that'll have much of an impact on them? I would expect Browning to go and

01:50play alongside Dan Neal, but they've got other players as well in that squad, so I wouldn't

01:57be surprised again if there's one or two in there and, as I say, signings, where they've

02:02got them from, how they've been developed, they're not scared to throw them in.