The encouraging Sunderland progress Tony Mowbray will tell his players to maintain against Luton Town

Tony Mowbray wants his Sunderland side to continue their good work from Deepdale as they look to again overcome a significant height disadvantage against Luton Town.

Mowbray is facing an anxious wait to see if Lynden Gooch and Dennis Cirkin will be fit to play in the first leg on Saturday evening, but regardless of their availability he knows that the visitors will pose a major threat from set plays and deliveries into the box.

The danger was underlined when Watford twice scored from a corner in Sunderland's last game at the Stadium of Light, but Patrick Bauer's header in the second half was the only real opportunity Preston were able to forge on Monday.

"The secret is to try and not give them many set plays, to try and keep the ball down the other end of the pitch as much as you can," Mowbray said.

"Play on the grass as much as you can, and then you have to find a way to disrupt [the player your marking] without fouling.

"We talk about it [the danger], believe me. I felt at Preston that they became really physical [as the game went on] and I felt that we had to be really calm, to not give fouls away and in the end they were the team that gave a lot of fouls away because they were chasing the ball.

"That was a situation we handled really well, we'd spoken about keeping the ball on the grass, keeping it on the grass and taking our set plays quickly.

"You can't stop a team playing forward into your half, of course, and then you've got to win your headers. We do a lot of work on trying not to make it a fight, so that we can keep the game on the grass and we can play. I think the players are taking that on board and I think we're getting there as a team.

"I do think this game is going to be very difficult because they are athletic, they can go man-for-man and deny you space. It's a tough game, we felt that seven weeks ago when we played them at home.

"I see this being a tight match."