"It's still a long journey, we know with this busy schedule playing in Europe, playing in the Carabao Cup, it's a new challenge for us and we need to embrace it. I think we showed this afternoon that we are in this challenge, we want to embrace it and be ourselves and we probably deserved a bit more today."

"I think it was a good effort from everybody so obviously we want three points from where we are in the table but keep putting up the performances like that and we'll get some."

"But the table always reflects where people should be but we need to keep looking at ourselves, don't look at other anyone else, it's no-one else's fault but us and we know that."

"It suits us all nicely and we're going to need everybody in the squad and whatever competition it is we're out there to win games."

• Sunderland have nine points fewer than they did at the same stage of last season's Premier League (5 in 2026-27, 14 in 2025-26), the biggest drop-off after eight games of any team.

• No team have scored fewer goals than Sunderland (6) in the Premier League this season. Only twice previously have the Black Cats netted fewer after eight games of a Premier League campaign: 3 in 2002-03 and 5 in 2013-14.