BILLY JONES has delivered a message to the growing number of people who have been tipping Sunderland for relegation: “Write us off at your peril.”

Having dropped into the bottom three for only the second time this season when they could only draw at Stoke at the weekend, the Black Cats’ relegation worries intensified on Tuesday when Hull City’s home win over Liverpool lifted the Tigers four points clear of the drop zone.

With five games remaining, Sunderland probably need a minimum of two victories to have a realistic chance of avoiding the drop. Given that they have only won two of their last 16 matches, that is clearly a tough task.

The identity of their remaining opponents piles on further pressure, with matches against Everton, Leicester, Arsenal and Chelsea following Saturday’s home game with Southampton, but with memories of last season’s ‘Great Escape’ still vivid, there is a sense within the Stadium of Light dressing room that survival is still on the cards.

Jones was still with his previous club, West Brom, while Sunderland were clawing back a seven-point deficit in the final five games of last term, but having discussed the comeback with a number of his team-mates, the full-back sees no reason why the Black Cats should not be able to stage a repeat.

“I hope that maybe people out there are looking at our fixtures and thinking, ‘Well, they’ve got three tough away games and some tough home games to come as well’,” said Jones. “By all means let people write us off.

“All that will mean is that they’re in a comfort zone, thinking they’re already safe, and assuming that Sunderland are done for. As a player, last year, if I’m honest, I know I thought exactly the same.

“I thought looking at Sunderland’s fixtures, ‘How are they going to do it?’ But they did. We need to try to emulate that and do it again.”

Twelve months ago, Sunderland headed to Stamford Bridge with five games remaining and their survival hopes effectively written off.

Fabio Borini’s penalty enabled them to become the first side to beat Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea in a home league game, and they followed up the win with further victories against Cardiff, Manchester United and West Brom.

From a position of seemingly-certain disaster, they were safe before the final weekend of the season, and while Jones is one of a number of players to have moved to Wearside since the end of last term, the core of the side that roused themselves so successfully a year ago remains in place.

John O’Shea, Santiago Vergini, Lee Cattermole, Seb Larsson, Adam Johnson and Connor Wickham all started the 2-1 win at Chelsea, and just as Wickham was the star of last season’s survival push, so he is threatening to hit form at a crucial moment again with two goals in his last two games.

“From the outside last year, what Sunderland did was unbelievable,” said Jones. “It was like (Tuesday) night where you were thinking, ‘Hull versus Liverpool – well that should be Liverpool winning there’.

“As a West Brom player last year, I thought we were safe with maybe five or six games to go, just because of Sunderland’s run in.

“Obviously, the boys produced the performances and the form to rightly stay up, and I just hope we can emulate that to some extent this year. As a group, we’re going to give it our utmost to get the results to stay in this league.”

While Hull, Aston Villa and Leicester have all produced a spurt of improved form in recent weeks, Sunderland have failed to build on what should have been a morale-boosting win over Newcastle.

As a result, while Saturday’s game with Southampton will not be decisive in terms of the league table, Jones accepts a failure to claim all three points would leave the Black Cats in an extremely difficult place.

“Hull might have won in midweek, but in a sense, nothing has really changed,” he said. “We still know coming into Southampton that it’s a must-win game, then we’ll go on from there.

“We’re at the stage of the season where we need to produce as a group, as a collective, our best run of form. Other teams have been doing that around us, so we need to do it as well to give ourselves a chance.”