Lee Johnson has only been in charge at Sunderland for a matter of days but his influence can already be seen on the pitch, according to Bailey Wright.
Johnson took over as the Black Cats' new head coach on Saturday where he was reunited with Australian centre-back Wright, who he had signed for Bristol City in 2017 and made his captain at Ashton Gate.
Johnson has been in charge for two games - a league defeat against Wigan Athletic just hours after he was appointed, and the midweek EFL Trophy win at Oldham Athletic - but Wright believes the new coach has already made an impact on the way the team plays.
There is still a lot of work for Johnson to do to turn Sunderland into a side that looks capable of winning automatic promotion but he has made a start.
"I had some great times with him at Bristol City and left there on good terms, which is always nice as a player," said Wright.
"I always had a good relationship with him and when I left we kept in touch, even after he left Bristol City.
"He's already brought lots of ideas and you can see some real patterns in how we played tonight and the style of play we want to implement.
"He's extremely detailed and thoroughly professional in his approach.
"He enjoys and no matter the result, he's always wanting to improve, improve, improve in every aspect.
"Every detail will be looked at as he puts his stamp and style on things.
"The positives are that we're taking it in quickly and we're only going to get stronger."
Johnson brought in academy graduate Jack Diamond against Oldham and afterwards he was full of praise for the 20-year-old, with Wright also pointing to the youngster's contribution as an example of the positive impact of the new boss.
He said: "You can already see the patterns and the basic habits.
"Jack [Diamond], for example, I thought was brilliant against Oldham.
"You could really see him bringing out his game, he had that confidence and little bit of arrogance, which is great to see.
"But that's just a little taster of where we want to get to.
"We've got a long way to go to hit the levels that we want to reach, but there was a lot of good stuff that we've taken into tonight from a very short space of time.
"We've got a great group here and real quality in the squad.
"We've started to implement it but there are levels we want to reach and there's a long way to go."
