Wright: A long way to go as the Cats transition under Johnson
Bailey Wright believes Sunderland can take heart from the early improvement in their performance at Boundary Park.
The Black Cats are embarking on a period of major transition under new Head Coach Lee Johnson, who is overhauling the playing style and philosophy.
Sunderland had to battle back from conceding an early goal against Oldham Athletic to book their place in the last 16 of the Papa John's Trophy, but showed a significant improvement on their poor performance against Wigan Athletic days earlier.
Wright warned that there is a 'long way to go' for Johnson and his side, but is encouraged by the early signs.
"You can already see the patterns and the basic habits," he said.
"Jack, for example, I thought was brilliant . You could really see him bringing out his game, he had that confidence and little bit of arrogance, which is great to see.
"But that' s just a little taster of where we want to get to.
"We've got a long way to go to hit the levels that we want to reach, but there was a lot of good stuff that we've taken into tonight from a very short space of time.
"We've got a great group here and real quality in the squad.
"We've started to implement it but there are levels we want to reach and there's
a long way to go."
Wright worked closely with Johnson at Bristol City, says the new head coach will leave no stone unturned as he embarks on his Wearside project.
"I had some great times with him at Bristol City and left there on good terms, which is always nice as a player," Wright said.
"I always had a good rela
tionship with him and when I left we kept in touch, even after he left Bristol City.
"He' s already brought lots of ideas and you can see some real patterns in how we played and the style of play we want to implement.
"The positives are that we' re taking it in quickly and we're only going to get stronger.
"He's extremely detailed and thoroughly professional in his approach.
"He enjoys that and no matter the result, he' s always wanting to improve, improve, improve in every aspect.
"Every detail will be looked at as he puts his stamp and style on things.
"There's positives to take and we have to keep building."
Johnson himself underlined the scale of the task ahead post-match, but said he was pleased with what he had seen from his team.
“It’ s definitely good to get a win – for the lads more than anything,” he said.
“I’m comfortable in my own skin to deal with the pressure, but there’ s nothing like winning football matches, and you could see in the dressing room that the buzz is back.
“What we have to do is see a bit of character in action.
“I was pleased with them today, even when we went a goal down it could have been a bit same-old, same-old, but we started to create cleaner-cut chances and with a bit more composure we could have had three or four goals today.”