Paul Bryson was left delighted by his sides disciplined showing at Liverpool on Friday night.
The Reds enjoyed much of the possession but had to wait until just past the hour mark when Luis Longstaff turned home a corner.
Sunderland continued to play with a spirit about their game and could’ve levelled late on, but speaking to safc.com the under-18s boss, Bryson, admitted there were plenty of pleasing signs from his sides performance on Merseyside despite coming home empty handed.
“The game plan was to suck them in and try to catch them on the counter,” he said.
“To be fair the game plan worked ok and we just got done by a corner which we didn’t react to quick enough.
“Longstaff got out to it well and managed to find the corner but we were too slow in reacting.
“I wasn’t expecting the performance we produced because I saw we got beat 6-0 off them in our first game of the season.
“That was in my mind and I’m sure it must have been on the players’ minds too,” he continued.
“Anthony Patterson made some good saves, but we did well to limit them to few chances, so it was really pleasing.
“We gave it a real go and had one or too little openings from crosses. We didn’t create too much but we produced a real disciplined performance.”