Sunderland manager David Moyes has claimed that his side have "forgotten how to win" as their relegation from the Premier League looms ever closer.
Wednesday's 1-0 defeat at the hands of fellow strugglers Middlesbrough was Sunderland's seventh in their last nine outings, during which time they have failed to win a single game, leaving them 12 points adrift of safety.
The Black Cats could be relegated as early as this weekend should results go against them, but Moyes was keen to emphasise that the club are focusing on a long-term plan following years of instability at the Stadium of Light.
"Oh, it hurts me, it hurts me totally. I'm certainly not smiling and laughing and enjoying myself. You want to have a winning feeling. Maybe we've forgotten how to do that. We have forgotten how to win. We have got to find that and we have got to get it back quickly," the former Everton and Manchester United boss told reporters.
"I'm here, I'm doing the job, I'll be working as hard as I can preparing the players to try to win tomorrow. We need to win tomorrow. We don't want to go down, but we also want to build momentum. We want to try to get a winning feeling back, we want to try to finish the season as well as we can if that's possible. That's my aim at the moment.
"A long-term plan is definitely needed for this football club. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to talk about it, but they don't actually want to see that this is the way it has to happen. But we will put it in place. There are a lot of things done behind the scenes we are trying to improve on. Sometimes change is [painful] and time in the modern life we work and live in is maybe not a thing there's an awful lot of."
Sunderland host Bournemouth on Saturday knowing that only victory will do if they are to stave off the threat of relegation for another week.
Barney Corkhill
