New Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill has revealed that he hopes to make his side play like Barcelona.

The Northern Irishman takes charge of his first match for the Black Cats at home to Blackburn Rovers later today (Saturday).

Despite his vision of a free-flowing Sunderland team, O'Neill is also aware that the side needs to win matches.

"I always come back to the way Barcelona play. It's a long way in the future, but you'd love to keep that in the back of your mind and think you could eventually have a team that could come out and play like that.

"Over the course of time, people will probably throw that back at me. Over the last couple of years, Arsenal have been very easy on the eye and it would be lovely to play a brand of football that would excite the crowd.

"But we need to win some football matches and I suppose at the moment pragmatism has to be the order of the day. We have to win games."

The North East side are currently 17th in the Premier League table.