JACK ROSS praised his Sunderland players’ ‘winning mentality’ as their seventh successive victory in all competitions secured a place in the FA Cup second round.

First-half goals from George Honeyman and Lynden Gooch enabled the Black Cats to claim a 2-1 win at Port Vale, with Ross’ side surviving a second-half onslaught from their League Two opponents, who scored at the end of the first half through Tom Pope.

Sunderland began their winning run when they triumphed at Bradford City at the start of last month, and further league victories over Shrewsbury, Doncaster, Southend and Plymouth have been accompanied by a Checkatrade Trophy success over Carlisle and yesterday’s win at Port Vale.

The sequence has lifted the Black Cats to second in the League One table, and all but guaranteed their progress in two different cup competitions, and Ross feels his players deserve huge credit for stringing together such an impressive run of results.

“To achieve the number of victories they have done is remarkable,” said the Sunderland boss. “At any level of the game, it’s not easy to keep banging out wins. Even the top teams, it’s very rare they hammer out the consecutive number of victories that we have.

“I know it’s at a very different level, but when I was Alloa manager, we did ten wins in a row in all competitions. We said to that group of players, ‘You’ll probably not do it again’ because it’s so unusual.

“The players deserve a huge amount of credit. They’ve done it in lots of different ways – sometimes we’ve been good, sometimes we’ve been average, but we’ve found ways to win games. Hopefully, we’ll keep doing that. The whole group wants to keep that run going. I think that was evident from the way they played.”

Sunderland displayed both sides of their character at Vale Park, with their free-flowing attacking football enabling them to take control of the game from the very first minute.

Honeyman broke the deadlock after 36 seconds, and the visitors carved out a succession of chances before Gooch doubled their lead in the 19th minute.

The opportunities continued to come, but Port Vale boss Neil Aspin changed formation at the half-hour mark and Pope’s clinical low strike changed the complexion of the game.

Suddenly, Port Vale had something to chase, and with the home support becoming increasingly vociferous, Sunderland’s players had to show their resilient side as they dealt with a series of second-half balls into the box.

“It was a proper cup tie – especially the middle period of the game,” said Ross. “The first half-hour was maybe not what we quite expected because I thought we were really good in that period, and really dominant. If I’m being hyper-critical, maybe we should have scored that third goal that would really have finished the game off.

“To their credit, Port Vale made a sub and changed their shape, and scored a good goal. That period from 30 minutes in to maybe 70 minutes was proper cup-tie football. We had to defend a lot of balls into our box, but we expected that. It’s not easy to do that at any level of football, and the players deserve a lot of credit for dealing with them in the main.”

Jack Baldwin and Tom Flanagan made a series of important second-half interventions, and Sunderland deserved to finish on top, such was the effectiveness of their early passing play.

With Chris Maguire pulling the strings in the ‘number ten’ role, the Black Cats fashioned some excellent early attacking moves and would have put the game to bed before the half-hour mark had they been slightly more clinical in front of goal.

“The players are confident, which comes with winning games,” said Ross. “But I’ve also got as group that listen and take on the information they’re given. There’s always frustrations because sometimes they don’t do as much as you would like, but the things we worked on and wanted to do in that first hand, we did it brilliantly.

“You’ve got to be brave to do it. Sometimes, when we have phases in games where we’re so dominant, we sometimes slip into not keeping on doing it. You’ve just got to keep on doing the same things, but that comes the more you’re in that position.

“They deserve credit because you forget in that opening period, they’re away from home against a team that I’m sure would have been told to start the game fast and get after us. To start the game in that positive manner was terrific.”

Sunderland will discover the identity of their second-round opponents tonight, with Ross ideally wanting to avoid the rest of the teams in League One.

“We’ll see what comes,” he said. “I was happy to come here today and I enjoyed it. It was a new challenge for us. I’d probably want to avoid teams in our own league, that’s the only thing. I’d rather just face them in league games so anything outwith our league is fine.”