Sunderland boss Steve Bruce expects next season to be as competitive as ever.
Bruce warns there'll be no let-up throughout the campaign with the field more competitive than ever in recent years.
"It's quite an evenly-spread fixture list this season, whereas last year you could look at chunks of games which looked particularly difficult," he reflected to safc.com.
"But we know that there's no easy games, as proved towards the end of last season when we dropped games we were probably expected to win.
"Do I look at the list and pick out particular fixtures? It's probably human nature to do so, but I try to take each game as it comes. You have to keep on an even keel in this game."
