Steve Bruce wants his Sunderland team to perform like they did at Manchester United...for the next six months. Manager Bruce is confident that progress has been made since he arrived on Wearside during the summer to pick up the reins at a club which avoided relegation by just two points at the end of the last campaign.

He said: "If you can go and win at Old Trafford, you can go and win anywhere.

"That would have given us a huge, huge boost, but it wasn't quite to be.

"We can still take heart from the performance and how we played - but the mark of a good team is can we keep repeating that, starting with Liverpool tomorrow and for the next six months?

"If we can do that, then we have got the makings of a half-decent team."