Last Updated: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 15:04
Martin O'Neill is confident he will have a team the Sunderland fans "are genuinely proud of" but it could take a couple of seasons.
The Black Cats boss has enjoyed successful spells at previous clubs Celtic and Aston Villa while he also engineered a turnaround in fortunes at the Stadium of Light when he replaced Steve Bruce at the helm almost 12 months ago and helped drag them clear of a relegation battle.
However, it has been a frustrating start to this campaign to date with just one win from nine Premier League outings, which have yielded a paltry six goals.
Add an embarrassing 1-0 Capital One Cup defeat on home soil to Championship neighbours Middlesbrough and the pressure is starting to mount on O'Neill.
However, the Northern Irishman is confident that he will get the club back on the right track but is calling for the fans to be patient with him.
He said: "By hook or by crook I intend to make this team one the supporters are genuinely proud of and feel as if they have a chance of competing.
"It's not overnight - I have not completed a season yet - but I intend to do that. I'm sitting here today in early November 2012 and I hope that in a couple of seasons we'll have a really strong team here.
"I want to have a side that not only I'm proud of, but that is also competing; and I don't mean invariably competing, I mean being as strong as Everton are, for instance. The one thing I do have, I think, is a little bit of spirit and plenty of determination and I've got a load of enthusiasm.
"It would mean a lot to me to make this a fairly decent football club and I've got a lot of self-belief not to be knocked off course here by a couple of results. I'll put everything into it, anyway, and I've got absolutely no doubt that it'll be good.
"It takes time. It sounds like a defence mechanism and I don't mean it to be the case, but that's the case."
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