Sunderland manager Tony Mowbray has admitted Jewison Bennette struggled with the language barrier after saving a point in a thrilling 2-2 draw with Watford at Vicarage Road.
Mowbray sent on a quartet of substitutes, including Costa Rican international Bennette, who scored his side’s equalizer in the 86th minute.
Mowbray said: “Jewi really can’t communicate with anyone at the club yet. He literally has trouble understanding everything we say to him. He just smiles at everything.
“It’s the same for a few of the substitutes I put in today. When they were standing in a chair and singing their initiation songs, they were all in French, so they got quite a bit of applause. rapidly.
“But as a club we are going to help them with that and teach them lessons. It’s much better for them than sitting in a hotel room and trying to learn through television.
“The real positive is that the young guys helped us recover from 2-1 today and get a point, which will help them.
“But if they hadn’t done it in training, I wouldn’t have put them on. You can’t keep pushing them back and leaving them on the bench.
Mowbray believes Sunderland’s four points from trips to Reading and Watford in the space of four days will give him more time to integrate the players he inherited from late manager Alex Neil into his own team.
He added: “Four points on the road against two teams, one with huge expectations to do well (at Watford) and one (Reading) who have started the season very well, helps the process to get where we want to be. .”
For new Watford manager Rob Edwards it was the third game in a row without a win for his side, but the former Forest Green Rovers boss is not too worried.
He said: “I’m frustrated with the result, but overall I saw a lot of positive signs today. For 20 minutes after half time I saw the team we want to be for 90 minutes.
“If you look at the consistency of performance, there are a lot of good signs. But we have to keep that consistency in games.
“It’s amazing how goals can change games. We scored the second goal and it’s happened a few times now that we scored and then we kind of died out. We want to have that intensity the whole game. .
“I can’t fault the effort and commitment of the players today. What I want us to learn is that when we’re at the top and in the ascendancy, we have to ride as long as we can.
Edwards admitted he was disappointed with the way Sunderland’s goalscoring went. The first came when Aji Alese’s shot was ruled to have crossed the line using goal-line technology, while Watford defenders left Sunderland substitute Bennette unmarked for the second.
Edwards added: “I wasn’t sure what the referee gave. I thought it might have been a free kick because there didn’t seem to be any calls from the Sunderland players either, so I was quite surprised when they ran away and started partying.
“With the second, most of the goals are conceded from wide areas. There are a lot of things we can address and some bases we need to strengthen.”
