RACHEL Furness says Sunderland are itching to set the record straight when Bristol Academy come to town today.

The newly-promoted Lady Black Cats sent shockwaves through FA WSL 1 with their opening-day victory over reigning champions Liverpool in March.

However, a 1-0 defeat in their first home game of the campaign against Manchester City swiftly followed on April Fools’ Day.

Sunderland are not in the mood for joking, though, and intend to cause plenty more surprises between now and the end of the season according to Furness.

And the 26-year-old midfielder admits they owe their fans a performance at the Hetton Centre today.

“Everyone is itching to go and has been working hard in training to make sure that we are ready for the match,” said Furness. “It’s going to be a tough match but they all are and we have to be on top of our game.

“We get the chance to go into the Bristol game at home which is great because we had a great crowd last time out.

“And we want to go out there and put right the things that went wrong against City and come away with a positive result.

“Going into the Liverpool match we were massive underdogs but we had nothing to lose and all the pressure was on them.

“I think no one got carried away after Liverpool and if you’d asked us before what our main objective was it would be to stay off the bottom of the table and nothing has changed.”

Bristol have lost both of their WSL games so far this season and their UEFA Women’s Champions League campaign recently ended in the quarter-finals against Frankfurt.

But England Under-23 international keeper Mary Earps insists Bristol are ready for the test on Saturday.

“The league is so tough and the fixtures we have got coming up are certainly hard ones, we just need to make sure we are doing our job and can come away with a positive result” said Earps.

“Sunderland are a side that have just come up and showed that they mean business with the win against Liverpool.

“They will be wanting to get a good run going and we will have to be aware of the threat that they pose. They have had their team together for a while now so they will be a good unit and hard to break down.”

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