HE is two-and-a-half weeks short of his first anniversary as Sunderland head coach, and while he admits his rebuilding project remains a work in progress, Gus Poyet is finally happy to describe the current Black Cats side as his own.

An enormous amount has happened since the Uruguayan replaced Paolo Di Canio last October, with Sunderland playing in the Capital One Cup final at Wembley, avoiding relegation by the skin of their teeth and signing eight new players this summer.

At the start of his reign, Poyet admits he was frustrated by the wild inconsistencies in Sunderland’s play, with a strong performance often being followed by an unexplainable capitulation.

It remains somewhat difficult to predict how the Wearsiders are going to perform, but as he prepares to take on Burnley at Turf Moor this afternoon, Poyet finally feels that he has made an indelible stamp on his squad.

“I am seeing my team on the pitch now,” said the Black Cats boss. “I can’t change the quality of the players because I don’t have those powers, but it’s my team. It is a consequence of everything we do during the week.

“It is the way we treat the players, the way we train and the way we manage the group. It is the quantity and quality of the training.

“When I first came here, the biggest challenge for me was to develop more consistency. It is impossible to be high all the time, but the thing was to be not so up and down.

“There were moments last season when I was thinking we were there and really close. Then bang, we would make a mistake or two and then there would be a sending off or something like that. Then we would have another good spell and then another bad one.”

Sunderland’s form in the current campaign has been more consistent, although with four league games under their belt, it is a concern that the Wearsiders are still searching for their first win.

Three draws from four suggests they are not far away, but while a win this afternoon would probably take them into the top half of the table, a defeat to one of the five sides below them could see them crash into the bottom three.

That would still represent an improvement on the chaotic start to last season of course, and Poyet attributes his side’s increased reliability to the effects of a full pre-season under his own control rather than that of Di Canio.

“We are trying to be a team that is difficult to play against,” he said. “You can have a bad spell in a game, and there will be other days when you have a great game. But you need to stay calm to get a result.

“In the past, something always seemed to happen. We would be giving the ball away for the opposition to score. When that happens, you think, ‘How is that possible?’

“Now, it feels like a new start because we have had a proper pre-season. We have got new players and new belief. Hopefully, we can be more consistent too.”

That consistency stretches to a reluctance to make too many personnel changes, with Poyet confident that maintaining the core of a settled side will make it easier for his team to find their rhythm.

That said, a number of last weekend’s substitutes are pushing for a place in the starting line-up, with Emanuele Giaccherini, Will Buckley and Jordi Gomez all having constructed a case for their promotion to the starting XI.

The alternative is to stick with Ricardo Alvarez on the left-hand side despite his somewhat underwhelming display in last weekend’s 2-2 draw with Tottenham, but whatever happens, the days of a Sunderland boss making a host of changes from one league game to the next are long gone.

“In training now, it is difficult to separate the players between the main XI and the fringe players,” said Poyet. “We have got players who are really pushing to be in the starting XI. They are all desperate to play, and they are keeping the other ones on their toes.

“I’m not going to change five players. I think I’m just holding myself a little bit. I’m not in a hurry to go bang, bang, bang every game.

“But I will see if I can manage it, depending on the results. You cannot go crazy. I could change six players for this game, but I don’t want to change six. It’s not right.”