Sunderland manager Mike Dodds believes he and his players remain confident as their downturn in form continues.
Despite a six-game losing streak that has effectively ruined Sunderland’s play-off chances, Mike Dodds remains optimistic in his team’s efforts.
The Black Cats lost 4-2 to Southampton at St Mary’s on Saturday, despite a second-half comeback that nearly tied the scores. Dodds and his team are being severely hampered by the absences of several key players, with the XI selected on Saturday being the youngest in recent Championship history – and by a pretty comfortable margin.
Dodds insists performances are still offering reasons to be positive and believes that the club’s luck will begin to turn as players filter back into the group and a punishing fixture list over the last week begins to ease ever so slightly.
Asked of the confidence of the group had taken hit of late, Dodds said: “Mine hasn’t. I’m really enjoying the role. If anything, it’s reinforced that when things aren’t going well I can still see the path we’re trying to go on and I can still see and feel belief in the players.
“In terms of the players, they’ve lost six straight games, they’re not skipping down the halls and high-fiving each other, but they understand what we’re trying to achieve. And you can look at the six outcomes, which are all awful, but when it comes to performance… The Huddersfield game wasn’t a great performance, the Birmingham game the first half was a good performance and the second half was a poor performance; Swansea I took responsibility for the first 45, I thought the second 45 was excellent; Norwich I felt we completely nullified them and there was nothing in the game; Leicester for large spells we were better than them and I felt we deserved a lot more than what we got. And I thought we were better than Southampton for large spells but on this occasion the bit I can’t defend is we’ve conceded four poor goals.”
Dodds is unlikely to welcome any of his currently injured players back for QPR’s visit this weekend, but expects the squad to be bolstered by the end of the upcoming international break.
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