Sunderland skipper John O’Shea has backed head coach Dick Advocaat’s positive approach to yield better results this season for the Black Cats.

O’Shea hopes Sunderland can avoid a repeat of last season when they only just avoided relegation in the final few weeks of the campaign.

The arrival of Advocaat spurred the side on in the run-in and they were able to keep their Premier League status intact. Now though, the aim for this season is to push on towards mid-table and O’Shea is confident Advocaat’s approach will pay off.

The Republic of Ireland international said: “What the manager showed towards the end of last season – it was obviously the situation he came into, but he wants to go and attack, he wants to have a go at teams.

“He makes his changes not to worry about other teams, he’s making changes in the team to affect us going forward to score goals. I think that will see us definitely winning more games than drawing.”

Sunderland got off to a poor start last week when they lost 4-2 at Leicester City but O’Shea has targeted a big improvement over the course of the campaign.

“To improve on last season, that has to be your target – to make sure we are not going into the last couple of games keeping away from the bottom of the table.

“It’s improving on last season, it’s always the case. You are hoping to improve on last season, without a doubt.”

On the back of their opening result of the campaign, Sunderland are expected to be in for another relegation battle this season and are currently priced at 2.00 to go down.