Jack Ross reacted angrily to criticism of his side's performance at Accrington Stanley on Saturday, suggesting negativity around the club could hold it back.
The Black Cats won 3-1 away at Accrington on Saturday to return to winning ways after their first defeat of the season at Peterborough a fortnight previously.
Although ruthless in front of goal, Ross' side were by no means comfortable winners in the Wham Stadium in what was a fairly open game.
But Ross took particular issue with a question during his pre-Rotherham press conference, when he asked to reflect on the 'good result, but poor performance' at Accrington.
He retorted: "One defeat in nine this season, six wins in the last seven. That’s rubbish.
“It’s tiresome and it’s part of the problem at this club. We win 3-1 away from home, and always want to improve on what we do, I just fail to see sometimes what will make people satisfied.
“To continue to be critical of any sort of performance and result is negative and is almost like an anchor stopping the club moving forward.
“So I take issue with it. I sit here often enough, and I’m polite and pleasant and I’m courteous. But we’ve won a game 3-1 away from home in the league and that should be it.
“If you win football matches it’s how you win leagues and win promotion. It’s an absolute fallacy to believe a team that wins promotion or a league title plays good every weekend. It’s absolute nonsense. In reality they probably play well in 50% of their games and then grind out wins in the other games.
“Nobody should ever forget we’re in an absolute results driven business. It’s about winning football matches and gaining points, and to date we’ve done that reasonably well.”
Sunderland currently sit fifth in the League One table, two points behind league leaders Coventry City having a played one game fewer. They average two points per game so far, and have lost just once.
But there has been some attention on performances, with a handful of supporters unhappy at the manner of some.
Asked if he was happy with the start to the campaign, and if they could maintain it, Ross said: "To score 18 goals in nine games is healthy. The quality of what we do in the final third is unquestionable.
“We want to go above the average of two points per game. We will keep striving towards that, but it’s been a solid start for us.
“We want to try and improve on that because if we can do better than two points average per game then we give ourselves a great chance for success.
“It’s been a good start to the season. It could be better, of course it could be, and we keep striving to make it better, but to date it’s been a solid start that allows us to look ahead and continue to pick up points.
“We knew August would be a busy month and then we had the enforced break.
“We knew this month was important to us. There’s a lot of games we looked at and said we can take points from them, starting with Saturday. If we can reproduce elements of what we showed on Saturday in our games coming up then it will put us in a good position going into the winter months.
“That’s the target for us throughout the month of September.”
