Humbled Nosworthy pleads with Sunderland fans for forgiveness after embarrassing letdown against Newcastle

Nosworthy said: "We do apologise for the poor performance against Newcastle. But we'd ask the fans to stay with us. We know the Newcastle defeat hurt them, it hurt us as well, but we need them against Boro.

"We're hurting, the way we lost the game was disappointing. It was a derby and it should have been more closely contested. Any game is a good game after Sunday, there is a lot of frustration and aggression around here and the fact that it's another derby is great."