A TITLE winning campaign last time out, before being named Scotland’s manager of the year and leading a promotion charge this time around. Jack Ross must be doing something right.

As a result, there’s no reason for the Sunderland boss to change his outlook to football management.

Ross won the Scottish Championship with St Mirren before being lured south to lead the revamp of Sunderland. He’s operating at a bigger level, at a greater club by some distance, but his methods won’t be altered.

Nine wins from 15 games and the Black Cats are three points off top spot ahead of travelling to face Plymouth tomorrow.

Ross, who will have centre-half Glenn Loovens back in his squad tomorrow, has a squad of players who have embraced League One this season. Confidence may be on the upward curve amid a run of five successive wins, but Ross won’t be changing a thing.

“There’s no complacency from my point of view – I might be boring in my answer but there’s a consistency in our approach,’’ he mused.

“My approach, as in previous jobs - and sometimes it takes enjoyment away, and last year we won the league in this manner – but it’s the same here; be consistent in your approach, be it win, draw or loss.

“And I would say to players that there is no complacency, they are loving their football at the moment and can’t wait to get out there and bang out some positive results.

“I don’t sense any complacency - they trained brilliant this morning and it was one of those as a manager you think ‘I’ve a right good squad here’.’’

It was eight games in before the Black Cats lost, going down at Burton in mid-September. A positive start to the season helped turn the outlook around instantly after a morose few years on Wearside.

Ross has a positive outlook himself, and that has reflected around the training ground from day one, leading to positive performances and some welcome optimism.

“I think we are in a good position so far, I think you can sometimes forget as time passes where you were when you first come in and the situation you inherited,’’ he reflected.

“So I think as a team and a club, looking back to that, then yes were are in a good position. But then in the season and as it progresses you want to be top and we are striving for that.

“Until we are are there, and stay, there I probably won’t feel that satisfaction but if I step back and look then we can be satisfied where we are in the space of a few months.

“There is a bit of optimism around and yet people seem to say we haven’t hit top form yet – I think you can argue for and against that.

“We haven’t went and battered anyone yet, but that’s maybe in line with expectations that when we came into this division it would be straight forward.

“But we see now it’s not easy to win games and in terms of pulling it all together for a complete 90 minute period, then I would say probably not. But we have still had enough to be happy with and if we continue the results, then if there is improvement to come then that will stand us in good stead too.’’

Loovens will travel, but will find it hard to start ahead of Jack Baldwin and Tom Flanagan in central defence.

And Ross also had some positive news about Charlie Wyke and Duncan Watmore, who are both closing in on returns.

The manager said: “Ideally I would like to give Glenn some game time, but it’s not always possible. He’s trained fine, back out with the squad. The only longer term injuries are still unavailable.

“Charlie is where we expected him to be – probably around Christmas time is where we expected him to be and he probably feels he is a bit ahead of that. It’s a similar injury to earlier in the season and he feels better now than he did then – and we are not putting as much pressure on him now to rush him back.

“There was a real urgency to get him back before, because of limited options, but there’s a few more options now so we can be a bit more patient.

“Duncan has now completed three weeks of full training, in every day which is a brilliant step forward. We are something like 11 months into his rehabilitation period, which second time around for that injury is a good benchmark. We can now start to get closer to game time, either Under-23s of behind closed doors. I would expect before the end of the year we would have him available.’’