The Insider: Sunderland have been effective and steady '“ exactly like Portsmouth

It has been very encouraging, although Sunderland have been effective without ever really blowing teams away.

I think they share similarities with Portsmouth, with no big, emphatic wins, instead producing steady performances.

There's a lot of optimism and a real feel-good factor around the club, yet everybody is hoping displays are going to get better.

There has been the odd occasion, such as beating Scunthorpe at home 3-0, but they haven't blown teams away, despite really good patches in matches.

It has been a bit of a common theme after games to hear the opposition manager talk about how his team matched Sunderland.

But when you are 20 games into the season and everyone is saying that, it gets to the stage where it is not a coincidence any more. The Black Cats are a good unit, have a habit of winning and possess a good spirit.

Probably like Portsmouth's Jamal Lowe and Ronan Curtis, Sunderland have Lynden Gooch and Aiden McGeady adding that extra bit of quality in the final third.

They also possess Josh Maja, a brilliant finisher with 13 goals, who has scored with every other shot on target this season. He has been ruthless.

He was signed by the Black Cats as a scholar from Fulham at the age of 16 and had a superb pre-season ahead of last term, only to suffer a nasty knee injury.

He came back at the turn of the year, but couldn't nail a place down as he tried to get back to full fitness.

Then, following departures of strikers, Maja started this summer as the main forward and has kept on scoring, including netting in each of his opening four League One games.

Inside the box his finishing is fantastic, can shoot with either foot and has been a big success story.

Pre-season, the owners played down promotion a little bit, insisting the target was play-offs, clearly quite conscious of how much turnover there had been in the summer.

The manager Jack Ross, though, immediately announced his goal was to win League One '“ if not, then to go up in second. He has never changed that stance.

If you look at potentially the first-choice team against Portsmouth, you could have four or five of them who were at the club last season.

Of those, George Honeyman, Gooch and Maja are Academy products, while McGeady wasn't really in the side. The other one is Lee Cattermole.

It was pretty much an entirely new squad, with 13 or 14 recruited in the summer, so there was probably an acceptance it would take a while for them to bed in, but that really hasn't been the case.

McGeady was injured for the opening month, but has since returned with five goals and four assists in 13 matches, while Maja has plenty of goals.

Probably the signing of the summer, though, has been keeper Jon McLaughlan. There have been quite a few 1-0 wins, with the former Bradford man making an absolutely huge save at certain points.