Sunderland defender John Egan is happy working alongside the senior pros in Martin O'Neill's squad.

Egan admitted that he still has a lot of work to do to impress manager O'Neill.

Egan told safc.com: "It was great to be given a squad number at the beginning of the season but there's still a lot of hard work to be done in training to push and get in the actual squad.

"I'm just going to keep playing my football and hopefully keep improving and catch the manager's eye.

"Pre-season was great, I got the chance to come on a few times and spend time with the first team and I really enjoyed that.

"Now it's up to me to concentrate on getting in there on a regular basis."