Sunderland players know they need to eke out a win after defeat to QPR.

Martin O'Neill's side have lost four of their previous five league matches, leaving them just six points off the drop zone.

"We have to pick ourselves up very quickly," defender John O'Shea said.

"We had a great start to the game but they got a bit of luck for the equaliser - the ball hit the inside of my foot after the lad (Townsend) had mishit his shot and fell right to Remy who tucked it away.

"They scored a pretty good goal to go 2-1 up but we definitely should have done better with the last goal. Even with the second goal, we could maybe have stopped it beforehand.

"If we'd done that we would have caused QPR a few more problems because the home crowd were getting tense. We needed to be cleverer with the ball.

"We have to front up now. We have a big week and the Norwich game is building up to be massive."