David Moyes has urged his players to stay focussed ahead of Sunderland’s Premier League clash with Southampton.
Fans and pundits alike were swept away in a frenzy of excitement following last weekend’s rout at Crystal Palace, but at the Academy of Light it’s very much been business as usual with everything geared towards Saturday’s Stadium of Light crunch-match.
Victory over Claude Puel’s side could see the Black Cats move up to 16th if other results also go in their favour, but Moyes isn’t concerned with goings-on elsewhere with his focus firmly on Wearside.
And speaking pre-match, the Sunderland boss challenged his players to replicate last weekend’s performance at the SoL.
“We had a great result last week and the players showed exactly what they can do,” said Moyes. “It was a very good all-round team performance both in terms of scoring goals and, more importantly, keeping a clean sheet and cutting out mistakes.
“From that point of view we were pleased and we’re in a good mood, but we also know we’ve got a long way to go and a lot more to do.”
He continued: “If we continue to play at that level we’ll give ourselves every chance of moving off the bottom of the league, but if we don’t then we’ll still be there so we need to do the right things.
“I’ve sensed that we want the next game [following that big win] and I hope that proves to be right, but we have to play well and I’m saying to the players ‘can we do it again’ because they were fabulous last week.
“We’ve been in this position [being able to get out of the bottom three] once or twice before this season and we haven’t done it, so we have to make sure we do it this time.
“We have to be positive and we have to win.”