Former Newcastle United defender Steve Howey has stated that Sunderland can't just rely on Charlie Wyke to score them goals, during an exclusive interview with Football League World. 

The 28-year-old striker enjoyed the best season of his career to date in the campaign just gone as he surpassed the 30 goal mark for the Black Cats across all competitions.

Wyke became the side's leading focal point under the guidance of Lee Johnson at the Stadium of Light and was far and away their highest scorer.

Their second highest scorer was Grant Leadbitter who weighed in with seven goals of his own, whilst the next highest scoring forward player was Chris Maguire who could only muster five as the club became even more reliant on Wyke.

In fact during the final 10 games of the season, the former Middlesbrough frontman plundered almost all of his side's goals in that set of fixtures and the club rarely won when he didn't find the back of the net.

Speaking to FLW recently, Howey was quick to point out that Sunderland cannot become too reliant on the powerful striker to score their goals, with contributions needed from elsewhere in the team:

"You are looking for more goals from your wide players, I mean I know Aiden McGeady was kind of putting them on a plate for Charlie Wyke, but you're looking at all of the rest of the players that are in there. 

"And that includes the likes of Max Power when he was in midfield, Chris Maguire, you know, people like that, these are the ones that you're wanting to chip in. 

"Unfortunately there just wasn't enough goals coming from those areas. As I've said before, if you've got aspirations to make it out of that league, and it's a very difficult one to get out of, you need everybody to be chipping in with goals."