Sheffield United man 'always believed he could play in the Premier League'

Egan, who moved over from Cork to join Sunderland and has worked his way up the levels with clubs including Southend, Gillingham and Brentford, made his Premier League debut on the opening day of the season and has been in fine form ever since.

United's success this season so far - they sat seventh in the table when the campaign was postponed - owes much to their fine defensive record, with Egan marshalling a back three also including Chris Basham and Jack O'Connell.

Behind them Dean Henderson has been imperious and only champions-elect Liverpool, 25 points clear at the top, have conceded less than United's 25 league goals.

“I think I’ve settled in quite well. I’ve always believed I could play at this level and I’ve had to work my way up," Egan said, in an interview with Pundit Arena.

"I’m just very lucky that I got to taste Premier League football with such a good team and such a good group of lads.

“We have a lot of like-minded people on the team. I think everyone has raised their game 10-fold this year and that’s the reason we’re doing so well. I’ve found the step-up really exciting and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it playing against the big teams.

“Every game is such an occasion and it’s definitely something I want to keep doing.

“I think at the start maybe teams thought we weren’t going to be as gung-ho as we are, in terms of our formation and stuff.

“Teams probably didn’t know what to expect. We had a lot of teams matching us up early on in the first four or five games and that's a compliment to us.

“I think in the main we’ve been brilliant we’ve been hard to play against and have gotten better and better in terms of our own attacking play as the season has gone on. We’re all about improvement and we’ve improved a lot this year.”

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