Simon Grayson: You have to give me time to turn Sunderland around

The Black Cats are currently languishing in the Sky Bet Championship relegation zone and suffered another defeat at the hands of Ipswich Town on Tuesday night to pile the pressure on their boss.

Grayson takes his side back to former club Preston North End this weekend and in an interview with EFL sponsor Sky Bet insisted that the side was a ‘work in progress’ and that he needs time to allow the new team to gel.

He said: “Since I’ve been at the club I’ve tried to stress that we want to get promotion but we’ve not spent the money that other clubs have, but also we’ve not got a God-given right to it.

“We’ve got to have a sense that it’s a work in progress, I don’t really like using that word too much, but it is because of the turnaround of players that have gone out the club and everybody knows there isn’t the finances available because of what happens.

“There is a hangover from the Premiership days, no doubt, but what we wanted to do is try and create some positivity, get the players playing for the shirt and get an affiliation back with the supporters and that won’t happen overnight.

“You need to get the team to gel and working like you want it to work, because it took me two or three years to do that at Preston, you have to build slowly, you have to build window to window and be given time to allow that to happen.”