Grayson: Good standard set – we must stick to it

Simon Grayson says Sunderland will have to be prepared for a tough contest against Bury tomorrow night.

The Black Cats take on former SAFC midfielder Lee Clark’s side just weeks after a hard-fought 3-2 win in the opening friendly of the preseason programme.

Grayson said: “There’ll definitely be an edge to them – they’re playing against a team who have just come down from the Premiership, it’s live on the telly, they had a good victory on Saturday.

“We watched them and they’re full of enthusiasm, their work-rate is good, the desire and commitment is there. We’re not expecting anything less [tomorrow].

“The players are aware that they’re in for a tough game, but we want to get that winning mentality which can carry us on for the rest of the season.”

Grayson added that he was delighted to be back in competitive action and with the positivity at the club.

He said: “Pre-season is a means to an end, I don’t really enjoy it because it can be false at times – when there’s a buzz around in the dressing room before these games, when they know what it really means before they step out onto the pitch, the buzz afterwards if you get a decent performance and result. “When you go into the first game of the season, every manager is still a little bit unclear what they are going to get from the team. “I did say after the (Derby) game, when we started really well and suffered the disappointment of conceding, things do go around in your head, ‘what am I going to get now after what had happened against Celtic and St Johnstone?’.

“But all the negativity disappeared very quickly.

“The lads got back into it and performed very well. You could sense from everybody after that, even though we’d only drawn, there was so much positivity, from Ellis coming to support us to the players having a spring in their step.

“It is a start, but only a start. We’ve set the standards and now we have to stick to them.”