Sunderland captain John O'Shea is urging his side to become more consistent in order to avoid another relegation dogfight.

As it has been the case so often during recent times, Sunderland spent most of their time battling against relegation last season and were only able to secure their Premier League status on the 37th game week of the campaign.

Despite managing to survive once again, last season cannot be construed as a successful one for the Black Cats and O'Shea has implored his side to bring about more consistency into their game so as to avoid another relegation scrap in the future.

The defender said: "We have to maintain a consistency to make sure we stay away from a survival fight in future. It's such a fine line.

"There were plenty of games where we didn't deserve much and took a point, like Everton, but then there were games like at QPR where we lost 1-0 and you were thinking we deserved at least a point that day.

"We need to be scoring more goals as a team and that's not just the attackers - it's set-pieces, free-kicks and corners, because our goals scored column could have been much better."