Vito Mannone has expressed his happiness over the fact that his team Sunderland has made it to the final 8 in the ongoing Capital One Cup by securing a 2-1 victory against Southampton yesterday.

Mannone played for full 90 minutes in that game against Southampton and did a decent job. It was Mannone’s only third appearance for Sunderland.

Talking to the reporters at the end of the game, the 25 years Old Italian said, “It’s a fantastic win for us. Now, we will be confident going into our next league game this weekend.”

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get points from the last game, but, the way we played with only 9 guys in the second half of that game; it raised our confidence level.”

When asked how he is feeling after finally getting the opportunities to feature for the first team of Sunderland, Mannone said, “I am really happy. I had been waiting for the chances since the start of the season and honestly speaking, I had expected myself to be the first choice goalie coming into the season, but, that didn’t happen.”

“You get frustrated when you don’t get playing chances. It happens with everybody and I am no different. I wanted to be given opportunities. I had been working really hard in the training sessions.”

Mannone has arrived at the Stadium of Light this summer after leaving Arsenal. It hasn’t been revealed yet how much Sunderland had to pay to buy him.

Mannone had been in the starting XI of Sunderland in a few of their pre-season games and he was expected to start the league games too for the Black cats at the start of the ongoing season, but, Paolo Di Canio (the previous Sunderland boss) preferred Keiren Westwood ahead of him.