Dan Neil on win at Cardiff: 'Sunderland would have lost that last season'

Captain Dan Neil says the win at Cardiff was an important one - as it shows the young Sunderland squad is starting to mature.

Dan Neil shirt, Sunderland /

New captain Dan Neil believes Sunderland winning their opening day fixture against Cardiff is evidence that the young players are starting to grow up.

The Black Cats were handed a tough away test by the fixtures computer, but they were able to come through it relatively comfortable with goals from Luke O’Nien and Jack Clarke steering them to a 2-0 win.

It was a competitive game that Sunderland generally managed very well, and Neil says that demonstrates that the squad is starting to mature.

Speaking to safc.com after the game, Neil said: “It’s a really good start. I think we wanted to come here and win.

“I don’t think the performance was as good as what we’d have hoped, but I think these types of games last year, when maybe everything wasn’t going our way, we would have lost. That just shows how far the group’s came and the experience we’ve gained that we’ve managed to come away from here with a result, even though it probably wasn’t our best performance.”

“The first game is always tough. You don’t know what teams are going to be like coming into a new season. The Cardiff we played today is a lot different to the Cardiff we’ve played in the last two years. There is always that uncertainty around teams.

“They did come out different to what we kind of expected, but we adapted during the game. I still think we need to improve on our own game, that game model which we’ve been working on, and that was the first time it was put into competitive action where there was something on the line.

“I think everyone can see that there is still a lot of room for improvement. Like I said, we have to keep improving but we have to keep winning games and we managed to do that today.”

Sunderland will hope to take that momentum into the Carabao Cup game at Preston on Tuesday, although Regis Le Bris is expected to make wholesale changes to his side for that one.