Sunderland will go into every game looking to win rather than trying to avoid defeat as they look to scramble out of the relegation zone.
Eventually manager Chris Coleman hopes to drag as many as ten teams into the battle to stay in the Championship but for now all he is concerned about is pulling out of the bottom three.
With matches against Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers to come in the next month, there should be a chance to do that but whoever his side plays, Coleman insists the mentality has to be the same.
“To the stage where we’re thinking, ‘Right, there’s a ten-point gap between us and the bottom three,’ is going to need a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck,” he told his club’s official website.
“Until then, every game we go into we’ve got to try and get three points, home and away. We’ve got to play with the intensity we’ve shown in this last game (against Hull, which they won 1-0).
“Sometimes if you go to places with the psyche that you can’t lose, you don’t win. We’ve got to go there and just think positively. My message to the team will be just get the performance right, stick to the gameplan and focus on your own individual job. If you get that right, you’ve got a chance.
“I won’t be saying you can’t do this or can’t do that.”
Only goal difference is keeping Sunderland in the relegation zone [NOTE TO PRINT - CORRECT BEFORE SATURDAY’S GAMES] but as their form has improved under Coleman, so the likes of Birmingham and Bolton have picked up too.
Burton Albion will be hoping the arrival of former Black Cats hitman Darren Bent gives them a boost too.
It could make the end-of-season relegation scrap a much bigger free-for-all than had looked the case when he took over.
“You can look at the bottom three but I think there’s about seven or eight teams in it – and maybe eventually it could be eight, nine or ten teams because football’s funny, it can turn like that.,” said Coleman, who will continue to try and strengthen his squad before Wednesday’s 11pm transfer deadline. “All we need to do is look after ourselves.
“The next game is Birmingham and they’re down there with us so we’re going to go to Birmingham and try to get the points. So let’s concentrate on the performance.”
It will be Sunderland’s first away game since they let nearly 1,000 travelling fans down with their limp collapse in the 4-0 defeat at Cardiff City. That will be on Coleman’s mind at St Andrew’s on Tuesday.
“I find it tough when we go to places like Cardiff and we know they’ve been travelling since three in the morning to go and watch us and we let them down. It’s tough on them.
“On the other side of it, you know they feel proud of the team when the team performs with a certain vibe and a certain belief and determination and that’s what sets it alight for them. I look forward to trying to emulate performances like Hull where the fans have come away and gone, ‘That’s our team. I’m proud of that.’ We need to produce performances like that.
“It’s a biog pressure but if you want to play for a big club you’re going to have a lot of support and you don’t want to let them down. I’d rather it that way than not having any support.
“There’s no better feeling than having a club of this size all together.”