Looking good – but nothing has been achieved yet

After three consecutive away wins for Sunderland, the danger was they would slip up and undo a lot of that good work in their home fixture to Southend but they got the job done comfortably in the end with a three-goal victory.

Jack Ross inherited a club and team with a losing mentality and used to failure, and has turned that around, instilling a winning mentality and for that he deserves credit.

Things couldn’t really be going much better for Sunderland at the moment; on the pitch, four consecutive league wins has given this new team belief in themselves, while off the pitch the fans – after two years of watching incompetence on an epic scale – have fallen back in love with their football club.

However, nothing has been achieved yet.

We are not in an automatic promotion place yet, so there is still work to be done and it is important nobody gets ahead of themselves.

Whenever the team is on a good run of form, it gives everybody a lift but the danger is complacency setting in, thinking the job is done already, although from what I have seen from these players, I don’t think for a moment that will happen but it is still a warning worth heeding.

On Saturday, the thing I was most pleased with was another clean sheet, that is three in the last week and that is a massive improvement on just one in the first 12 games.

Lee Cattermole was once again a big influence on the team, he might not have been wearing the captain’s armband but he is still very much a leader and looks like he is really enjoying his football again.

Chris Maguire scored a better goal than his one at Burton, and the fans are calling him The King, although Charlie Hurley might have something to say about that!

But seriously though, the lad does have something about him and can get fans out of their seats and there are not many players at this level who can do that.”