DEAN Whitehead has urged his fellow Sunderland midfielders to take some of the pressure off the club's shot-shy strikers by finding the back of the net themselves.

Saturday's 1-0 defeat at Sheffield United means the Black Cats have now gone 280 minutes of pre-season football without scoring a goal.

The club's strikers have fared even worse, failing to find the target in any of Sunderland's six summer games, and all eyes will be on Jon Stead, Chris Brown and Stephen Elliott when Mick McCarthy's side travel to Holland to take on AZ Alkmaar in their final warm-up game on Saturday.

But, while Whitehead admits the whole of the Sunderland squad would have liked to have performed better in the last fortnight, the midfielder feels it is unfair to direct any criticism at the club's forwards.

"I think we have to help out," said Whitehead, who weighed in with five goals of his own as Sunderland won promotion last season. "I think all the midfield boys and even the centre-halves are going to have to start chipping in with three or four.

"We have to help the strikers out. They have a lot of pressure on them to score a lot of goals.

"You would have to ask them (the strikers) if they are worried. But we have to start putting chances away soon because we're not scoring goals and we're not winning games."

Saturday's defeat followed hot on the heels of Wednesday's setback at Hull's KC Stadium but, to Whitehead at least, the display at Bramall Lane marked a definite improvement.

"We're getting there," he said. "We're getting sharper and we're getting fitter. We're starting to create more chances and I hope we soon start to put them in.

"We have improved on the Hull performance, which is good, and hopefully we can keep improving until August 13".

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