SAM ALLARDYCE is holding a series of face-to-face meetings with his entire Sunderland first team squad in a bid to turn the struggling Wearside club around.

Allardyce is determined to get to the bottom of the Black Cats’ problems before his arrival and thinks discussing previous concerns, issues or his own aspirations on an individual and personal basis will help his cause.

The Sunderland boss spoke to a number of players before Sunday’s victory over Newcastle United in the Wear-Tyne derby and is working his way through the rest this week.

Full-back Billy Jones, due to meet up with Allardyce yesterday, was looking forward to the get together a lot more than he might have been before finding the net against the Magpies.

“The gaffer has held some one-on-one meetings and there was a sheet up for the other lads to meet him Tuesday, so it was quite nice to be having a one-on-one with the gaffer after a derby win,” said Jones.

“We were down when he came in because we were not winning, that’s obvious. But he has sort of brought back some belief by basically saying ‘if you do what I say, I show you how to do it and you do it, then you will win games’.

“It’s pretty simple really! But if you have a manager who believes that and the players believe it, then the results will come.

“He has proven himself at his previous clubs. He just basically stressed it has worked for me before and it will work again. He has shown what we need to achieve from a stat point of view, from the videos, the training pitch, so I expect our team performances to improve.

“You know from the gaffer that if you don’t improve individually then we will have the squad where changes will be made. That will happen.”

Allardyce has stressed the importance of following his lead to the players he has inherited from Dick Advocaat, but is also keen to hammer home the importance of an individual fulfilling expectations he is putting on them.

It will be hoped Sunday’s 3-0 win over Newcastle marks the start of a revival, after waiting ten Premier League games for a first win of the campaign.

Jones said: “I think at this stage he probably was the perfect appointment. That was the general opinion from outside looking in and the work we have put in on the training ground so far and the analysis we do, the stats we look at, is a total flip side to what the previous manager was doing.

“We have watched a number of videos on other teams, on ourselves, to see where we can improve – and looked at the stats as well – because we know we have to improve.

“The old gaffer was not in to the stats as much as the new one, obviously. That was obvious when he came in; the new manager got our stats out for the first eight games, showed us them all and the stats don’t lie.”

Despite the Football Association’s decision to overturn the red card issued to Fabricio Coloccini on Sunday, the fact remains Sunderland claimed a vital three points in the battle to climb out of the bottom three.

But with a trip to Everton on the horizon this Sunday, Jones knows it will not be easy to build up some momentum in the Premier League – even though that is exactly what they will try to do as a team after getting the breakthrough under Allardyce.

“There were two massive positives from Sunday and hopefully it will kickstart our season,” said the defender. “You can see from the work we have been putting in on the training pitch how we have benefited from the new gaffer’s ideas, we just want to follow this up with another next weekend.

“He puts real emphasis on the defensive side, a number of times in the build up to Newcastle we have split into defensive unit and the attacking units. He has taken the defensive stuff and tried to simplify things so there are no grey areas.

“He tells us when the right time is to squeeze, the angles to squeeze and just getting back to basics, which is what we needed. That is why as a defensive unit it was massive we got a clean sheet against Newcastle.”