Tony Mowbray on the clear message he'll have for Sunderland players ahead of play-off second leg

Tony Mowbray will tell his Sunderland players that they have to be positive as they try and seal a place at Wembley in the second leg of their Championship play-off semi final on Tuesday night.

Mowbray's side bounced back from Elijah Adebayo's early goal at the Stadium of Light to take a narrow lead to Kenilworth Road, with Amad and Trai Hume on the scoresheet either side of half time.

With Dennis Cirkin ruled out of the second leg Sunderland will again be without any natural central defenders, and the head coach says it is imperative that his side do not invite pressure.

He warned that his team have 'achieved nothing' against an excellent Luton side, who were superb in the first half on Saturday evening.

"We have to go and try and win, we won't be protecting anything, we won't be trying to slow the game down, we won't be putting loads of men at the back, we'll be playing our game and trying to win," Mowbray said.

"I need to put on record how good a football team we played against - they are really good, really athletic, powerful, like comrades in arms. I could feel their togetherness. They fight for everything, so no-one is taking anything for granted.

"We have another huge fight on Tuesday and we need to bring our best performance. What we've got is some confidence going away from home, believing that we can win football matches and not have to sit in and hang on - we can score goals, if teams over-commit against us we can play through them or play round them.

"We'll go to Luton and hope we can do just that, but we know they are a very good team," he added.

"We have to get the mentality right, and start the game as if it's 0-0. Because as soon as we think about protecting something, we'll get deeper and deeper and that will bring them closer to our goal and make it more difficult for us.

"We have to go there and believe, and try and win the match."