'More positive...': Cardiff City boss delivers interesting verdict after Sunderland defeat

Cardiff City Erol Bulut said his side’s performance against Sunderland gave him confidence for the season ahead despite the end result.

The Bluebirds dominated possession and territory across the 90 minutes, with Black Cats’ head coach Regis Le Bris the game had not panned out as he expected. Sunderland rode the pressure well to seal the win, with Anthony Patterson not having much to do aside from an early save from Dimitrios Goutas.

Bulut believes the cutting edge from his side will improve as summer signings find their feet and fitness, and insisted he was taking a lot of positives away from the performance.

“I am disappointed about the result, but not from what we showed in the 90 minutes today. We could get at least one point. We controlled the game," Bulut said.

"From mistakes we concede, a free-kick, the concentration was not like it should be. We tried to come back into the game. We had chances to score but didn't manage it.

"But today we can speak more about positive things than negative. It's one of 46 games. Our details, our mistakes, we have to work on it. Free-kicks, corner kicks, also offensively with the ball, we have to finalise better. But we take all the positives to the next game. Sunderland are a good team, we watched them against Marseille where they had a good game, but we gave direction to the game and all that was missing was the goal.

"Last season was something what we tried to build on and now we are trying to add quality and speed,” he added.

“How you saw today against Sunderland, we had the ball percentage more than the opponent. This we'll try to do more this season but we also have to score goals. This will come. I see the positives. today we created, in the coming weeks the goals will come. Wilfried Kanga came late so he's not really fit. [Chris] Willock needs games to be ready, [Anwar] El Ghazi still needs a few weeks. If we have them all in then I think I will be more positive."