VICTOR Anichebe has vowed to repay David Moyes for throwing him a Premier League lifeline – and insists there is more to come after his first Sunderland strike.

The striker, 28, admits he was ready to move abroad after leaving West Brom before being reunited with his former Everton manager.

And after marking his first league start with a goal and an assist that has ended Sunderland's wait for a first win at the 11th attempt, Anichebe said: “The manager has always shown faith in me. I’ve known the manager since I was 14 or something like that.

“I was set to go abroad when I saw my contract out at West Brom but then the manager got the job at Sunderland and I always said I wanted to work with him again.

“If he hadn’t left Everton, I don’t think I would have left there. But he has shown faith in me and hopefully I can continue to repay him.

“Doing it once isn’t enough. And it’s not just me. He’s brought a lot of players in.”

Anichebe’s goal showed the potential of his partnership with Jermain Defoe and the striker believes he will be even more effective when he gets in tune with the rest of his new team-mates.

He said: “If anyone knows me through my career, they will know I’m good at doing that. I can spin both ways or I can knock it off for someone else to shoot or create something.

“JD is smart in that way, he could see I was getting frustrated because I was getting in that position in the box and not getting the ball. But with the experience and quality he has got, I told him and he saw me there and gave me the ball.

“I worked on it during the week as well and hopefully I can stay injury free and carry on.”

Anichebe admits he knows how much Sunderland’s painful start has hurt the club’s supporters, but insists Moyes will turn things around.

The striker said: “Sometimes people speak to me and they don’t really know how to talk because we haven’t been getting the results but I tell them the spirit is still here, the belief.

“We can see signs of things getting better. Things haven’t really gone for us but we’ve always kept fighting.

“The manager told us after the Arsenal game we had to forget it and we had to keep fighting. It’s more of the old manager...he came in and he told us straight, ‘Saturday’s a must win game’.

“And he’s been on to us like crazy, it hasn’t been nice for us at times, everything been hard, but everyone got on together and we went out for w bonding session, bowling. And today you could see how much it meant to us.”

And he added: “He’s a really good manager, he just needs time to put what he wants us to do. And there were signs of that today, of the kind of things we used to do at Everton.

“We pressed, we showed a lot of resilience and we’d dig deep and I think that’s the foundation of doing anything and that’s what he is trying to instil into us.”