Source: PA
Bruce backs Muntari to star at Sunderland
Sunderland boss Steve Bruce is backing loan signing Sulley Muntari to pick up where he left off in the Barclays Premier League.
The 26-year-old Ghana international renewed his acquaintance with English football at Stoke on Saturday after arriving at the Stadium of Light on loan from Inter Milan.
But unlike new team-mate Stephane Sessegnon, who made his second appearance for the club at the Britannia Stadium, Muntari has already had a season in the Premier League - with Portsmouth in 2007-08 - and Bruce believes that experience will prove invaluable.
The manager said: "The good thing about him is he has played in the Premier League and he is used to the Premier League. "I think he was [Jose] Mourinho's second signing at Inter Milan - and if you look at what he has done there, won the Champions League, won the league twice...
"He is a very, very good player - if you look in those times, he has scored something like 15, 16 goals, so he can bring you a goal, he has got a wand of a left foot.
"He is a very, very good player, so that's what we have brought him in for. In an ideal world, I would love to have had him for two or three weeks to get used to the squad and get him up to match fitness, but we might have to throw him in at the deep end and let him swim."
