Michael Duff | It's a tough test but we have shown we can hurt teams

Head coach Michael Duff expects a tough test against Sunderland this afternoon, but is confident his Swansea City side have the balance of quality and resilience to cause the visitors problems at the Swansea.com Stadium.

The Swans host the Black Cats having won five of their last seven Championship fixtures, and return to the Swansea.com Stadium following a hard-fought win at Blackburn last weekend.

Sunderland, meanwhile, sit just outside the play-off places having snapped a three-game losing run with victory over Norwich last time out.

Duff knows the visitors will bring no shortage of energy to proceedings, but feels Swansea’s recent run of performances shows they are capable of asking questions of any opponent.

“Sunderland are a really good team, they are young, they have loads of energy and lots of quality in wide areas,” he said.

“They can hurt you in lots of ways. They were in the play-offs last year and have an experienced manager.

“We are going to have to be bang at it, but we have proved we can hurt other teams in a number of recent performances.

“We are back at home. Our last two at home we had two disappointing results, and one disappointing performance.

“But if we can get on the front foot, and use the ball better than we did against Watford we feel we can cause problems ourselves.

“Ideally we want that balance of a good performance and a win, we know we will need to be at our best, play our way and be on the front foot from the start.

“We were good at Blackburn, we had control of the game and had chances to be further in front, but also had the resilience and togetherness to make sure we won the game.

“If we can play that way with the support we have, we hope it can be a good afternoon.”