SUNDERLAND boss Mick Mulhern is refusing to get carried away despite holding a four-point lead at the top of the FA Women’s Super League 2 table following his side’s convincing victory over Millwall Lionesses.

Captain Steph Bannon opened the scoring before half-time and Sophie Williams, Keira Ramshaw and Rachel Furness added gloss to the scoreline after the break.

But with Reading next up for the Lady Black Cats on August 23, Mulhern insists any talk of promotion will be put on ice.

“We’ve got some tricky fixtures coming up including Reading, who I thought, along with Doncaster, would probably be the main threat to us,” he said.

“I don’t like using the cliché one game at a time, but it really is that. We’ll not get ahead of ourselves.

“I was absolutely delighted with the performance. There were things we’ve been working at over the last couple of weeks in training that started to come out.

“As the game progressed we started to work for each other and we started to play much better because of it.”

The Lionesses almost opened the scoring through Leeta Rutherford, who drilled over from the right edge of the area on 11 minutes.

Ten minutes before halftime Sunderland’s Abby Holmes played a neat ball into the path of Williams, whose shot was blocked by Sarah Quantrill.

However Quantrill could do little to prevent the hosts taking the lead just before the break as a corner from the right was headed back at the far post and Bannon nodded in from close range.

Sunderland, now four points above second-placed Doncaster Rovers Belles, doubled their lead on the hour mark when Furness threaded a ball through to Williams and she stroked a shot across Quantrill into the bottom left corner.

On 65 minutes Ramshaw pounced on some poor handling from Quantrill and tucked home from six yards to make it three and Furness wrapped up the points with a low drive two minutes from time.

Millwall manager Alberto Kurti said: “I cannot fault the girls in terms of the effort they put in.

“If you look at the way the game went, I felt the 4-0 was a bit harsh on us because we tried and worked hard and we caused Sunderland problems.’’