Sunderland looked to have pulled off a real transfer coup during the January transfer window when they secured the services of Leeds United striker Joe Gelhardt.
With Ellis Simms having been recalled to Everton, the club's striking department was looking even thinner than it had done prior to that, and the prospect of a Gelhardt and Ross Stewart partnership was leading the line for the Black Cats was an exciting one.
Within days of Gelhardt's arrival, though, the club were hit with terrible news.
During their FA Cup clash with Fulham, Ross Stewart picked up an achilles injury, and in the following days, it was confirmed that this was a season-ending injury for the Scotsman.
Despite that, Sunderland opted not to dip into the transfer market for another forward late on in the transfer window, and so the burden immediately fell on Gelhardt to be an instant hit.
That hasn'te quite been the case so far, though, unfortunately for the young forward.
So far, Gelhardt has made 10 Championship appearances, but, to date, has just one goal to his name.
This had led to calls from former Sunderland player Stephen Elliot to drop Gelhardt from the starting line up.
In his recent Sunderland Echo column, Elliot wrote: "Joe Gelhardt is a good player and I believe he will go on and have a top career, but it’s just doesn’t seem to be working for him at the moment."
"I think he has a clever football brain and he takes up decent positions, but I feel it may be time to give somebody else a run up there.
"He looks like a player whose confidence is shot to pieces in front of goal and continuing to start him may do him more damage than good.
"He is snatching at chances and it may suit him to come on against a tiring defence late on, rather than have the pressure on him from the off."
Despite these comments, though, Tony Mowbray should resist any notion of dropping Gelhardt just yet and instead persist with the young forward.
It was always a possibility that it would take time for him to get going having not played much football this season at Leeds and so it shouldn't come as a surprise.
Furthermore, there are no natural striking replacements for him, regardless.
Sure, they have wide attacking talent that could play as a false nine, but I'm not convinced that would yield much more success for the Black Cats than persisting with the Leeds man.
In addition to the above, it could be argued that Sunderland don't have a great deal left to play for, and so they can afford to be more patient.
The club still have the slimmest of chances of making the play-offs, but, with some tricky fixtures coming up and a big deficit to make up on the top six, it looks more unlikely than likely at this point.
For all of the above reasons, Sunderland and Tony Mowbray should persist with Joe Gelhardt for now.
Despite calls to drop him, as a young player, he deserves time to get up to speed fully and if he did that, he can be a real asset for Sunderland.
Plus, the Black Cats don't really have anyone to replace him with, anyway.