Grant McCann says Hull City physically and mentally better as they start new season with penalty shoot-out win

McCann's Tigers were somewhat fortunate to take the game to a penalties after a scoreless 90 minutes, but they withstood early Sunderland pressure, went on to dominate the final 20 minutes of the game without creating enough good chances, then won a penalty shoot-out 5-4.

More still needs to be done to bury the memories of finishing bottom of the Championship last season, but it was at least a start.

“We wanted to start as we mean to go on, really,” said McCann. “We wanted to win the game and get into the next round and we've done that, albeit on penalties. We had to grind it out at times and stay strong because Sunderland came strong at us in the first half but we showed real composure not to concede. We didn't get stressed by it because they were good in the first half, there's no way around it.

“The second half I felt we were much better. There wasn;t much in the second half and the last 20 minutes we were the stronger team. I think our fitness levels looked really good.”

McCann paid tribute to his backroom staff for getting the team into good physical shape, largely by ignoring traditional pre-season friendlies.

“I think the boys are in a really good place and the sports science and medical team have worked really hard with the players,” said the coach.

“We deliberately didn;t have too many pre-season games, we had a lot of in-house games because we felt 20-minute games times three three or four times a week were better. We did that a lot and the intensity levels were much higher

“We had the one friendly against Rotherham playing two 90 minutes to get the boys that feel of competitive football but today I was really, really pleased with the group.”

Sunderland started the game particularly strongly, Brandon Fleming clearing off the line in the first minute and Will Grigg having the first of two “goals” disallowed in the third.

Hull made a bad habit of conceding early goals in last season's run-in but McCann does not think it is a mental block.

“It's just a mistake in the early part of the game,” he said. “They got in behind us at left-back. We're going to make mistakes this season, it's how you react to them. That's the biggest thing and we didn't conceded.

“Sunderland are used to winning and are going to be right up at the top end of League One this season and we were minus six or seven players and we've come here and got the job done.

“There's loads for us to work on because we want to continue to improve and keep working and working until we get confident.”

The Tigers will assess the fitness of Tom Eaves , injured in the first half.

“It looks like he's gone over on his ankle," said McCann. "He's in a boot and we'll see how he is.

“I think the last time he did this was at Preston last season so we're hoping it's not as bad as that."

Hull host Leicester City Under-21s in the Football League Trophy on Tuesday, then travel to Gillingham for their opening League One game on Saturday.

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