Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn admits the constant chopping-and-changing of the squad has hurt their progress.

He said: "At the moment, our aim has got to be to somehow get ourselves into the top half of the Premier League.

"There's no reason why we shouldn't be saying that, and with the squad that we have now, with their ages and their profiles, it's not unrealistic.

"One of the big problems we have had here is that we have had three teams in three-and-a-half years.

"We inherited a team which wasn't good enough and we added to that to get ourselves out of the division.

"We completely remodelled the team to stay up and we changed it again in the summer hoping to progress, so it has been tricky.

"No-one foresaw Roy (Keane) and the demise and the six weeks we'd had where we weren't winning, but we have come through and Ricky (Sbragia) needs to be applauded for that."