Sunderland defender Jordan Willis is confident the new system put in place by Jack Ross to make the side more effective can be a success, despite the disappointing opening day draw with Oxford United, as reported by the Sunderland Echo.

The Black Cats found themselves 1-0 down after a quarter of an hour against Oxford, needing a second half penalty from Lynden Gooch to give them a share of the spoils at the Stadium of Light.

Willis, who made the move to Wearside from Coventry City this summer, is confident that things will improve under Ross' new approach. He's switched to 3-4-3 setup, differing to their preferred 4-2-3-1 of last season.

“I've played it before but every manager has a different tweak and style on it,” said Willis.

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“It allows us to be expansive, pass it around, play the big switch. We've worked a lot on it, you can see when it comes off it works really well."

Despite the positive words for the fresh approach, Willis conceded his side need to be better after failing to break down Karl Robinson's Oxford team.

“We've got to be more ruthless at both ends of the pitch.

"I think we made it hard for ourselves going behind early on because from then on you're chasing it. They were quite smart in what they did so we need to cut that out and be more ruthless."

Willis was making his full debut for the Black Cats after his summer move from Coventry City. 33,498 crammed into the ground to watch the first game of the opening season, almost three times as many as the next highest attendance of the day which was 11,359 at Blackpool.

The Verdict

New systems take time to get right, but Jack Ross might not have time. If his side gets off to a bad start he's likely to pay for the failure with his job; they have to go up this season.

On this display, they're certainly not going to run away with it as many think. That said, it's one game under a new system and they have the players to get it right.

The defence did look a little shaky for a while and had they been tighter in the opening exchanges, they might have won this encounter as Oxford offered little going forward after the goal.

The next two matches, against Ipswich and Portsmouth, are crucial.