Every word from Mike Dodds ahead of Sunderland vs Norwich

Dodds took interim charge of Sunderland for the second time this season for last weekend's defeat to Swansea City after the club parted company with Michael Beale. 

Dodds remained enthused about having another spell in charge with the club taking the decision to allow him to see out the remainder of the season, with Sunderland's play-off hopes stuttering. 

But despite an uplift in mood, Dodds oversaw a hugely concerning performance at the Stadium of Light as Sunderland fell to a 2-1 defeat to Swansea - a result which leaves them eight points adrift of the Championship's top six.

Dodds has also been hit with the news that he will be without star winger Jack Clarke, with the 23-year-old set for up to six weeks on the sideline with ankle ligament damage, as Sunderland prepare for a tough run of fixtures against Norwich City, Leicester City and Southampton.

READ MORE: Mike Dodds explains 'crushing blow' of Jack Clarke injury news

And here is what Dodds had to say ahead of the trip to Carrow Road this weekend:

Losing a player like Jack, are you mindful now to think about being more defensive and difficult to beat?

I think there’s got to be a strapline in all the games as to what Sunderland are. I don’t think we can be passive in any of the games. I got asked about the Leeds game where the question implied that we sat off them and if you watch that game back, we denied them space but when the ball went into certain areas of the pitch we were really aggressive and we were a little bit more on the front foot. So it might be a case that we might have to concede some territory, but in terms of a Sunderland team, we can’t be passive and we won’t be passive how we approach the game.

Regardless of Jack Clarke or not, we still have a running thread of how we want Sunderland to look and that’s something that’s going to be my responsibility for the next 12 games to find a solution to that. To be honest, I’m looking forward to the challenge of that, it’s going to be a real challenge for me and I think it would be a real challenge for the most experienced coach who could sit here. When you take someone of his quality out of your armoury, you can have the most experienced coach in the world sat here and it would be a challenge, but that’s something I’m looking forward to over the next period and it’s something where I won’t leave any stone unturned to find a solution to make sure that we go into every single game with a mindset that we’re going to win the game.

Playing with a back three, is it something you’ll reconsider when Dan Ballard returns or is four the most solid and safe approach?

I’ll play a three again at some point. I showed last time and I think I showed on Saturday, like I said before, I’m not a roulette table, I’m not gambling or risking. It’s well thought-out, whatever we come up with and it will be discussed a thousand times.

I went with a back three and the outcome was the outcome, it wasn’t a positive outcome but I will make decisions that might be slightly risky to try and get a positive outcome, if it works I’m a genius and if it doesn’t I’m an idiot. For 45 minutes [on Saturday] I was an idiot. That’s something I’m comfortable with. I’m comfortable sitting in that territory because I said when I took this role that I would be authentic to me and I wouldn’t allow anyone to dictate or influence my thought processes. I do too much preparation and I spend too much time planning training sessions and watching opposition, looking at strengths and weaknesses.

I’m not going to delve into what happened on Saturday because it’s in the past, but there were some things tactically that I actually quite liked, we just didn’t execute it. That’s not an excuse, by the way, because whatever answer I give to what happened in the first 45 minutes, all the roads point back to me anyway. But I’ll go back to a back three if I think it’s right for the team.

Over the next week you’ve got Norwich, Leicester and Southampton – do you have to factor in the miles you’re going to be doing?

Definitely. They’re all the things you take into consideration when you’re picking the team and your shape and your tactics because we are going to have to utilise the whole squad over the next three games, we’re going to need everyone. It’s going to be a tough week. But it’s a week, from a personal perspective, that I’m really looking forward to. I’m coming up against three really good coaches who have got really well-coached teams and have really good individuals who can execute the stuff they want to do.

From a personal perspective it’s going to be a real challenging week and regardless of what happens I’ll be stronger for it coming out of it. We’ve shown when we’ve played these three teams previously that when we’re right at it, and we’re fully focused, we can get a positive outcome. So there shouldn’t be anything to fear, whether it’s naivety or youth. I’m not going into the games with any fear. I’m respectful of what we’re coming up against because they’re three really, really good teams but I’m not fearing the opposition in any way.

Josh Sargent is a big threat?

They’ve got good players all over the pitch. They’ve got a lot of threats but we’ve got to control what we can control. They will know that we’ve got some good players. We played them earlier in the season and we were excellent against them so I’m really looking forward to the game. The group have been excellent in training this week, regardless of the result. There’s been a real vibrancy in terms of the way they’ve trained. I see a group of players who are really hungry to get back onto the pitch and correct what happened last Saturday.

What’s the latest injury news?

Corry is back in full training but we need to treat that with a level of caution because he has been out for over a year. He has been back in training and it's great to have him out there in terms of his experience and his know-how.

Aji and Dacky are not far away. They're part training, so there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel with some of them, but in terms of this weekend it's going to be a similar type of squad.

With Jack Clarke’s injury that eight point gap suddenly looks enormous but you can’t let that translate to the players, can you?

No, and it hasn’t translated to the players. Like I said, training has been excellent. I was really, really happy with training, there’s been a real focus this week. For myself who is leading the ship at the moment and all the staff, we’ve got to double-down on what we’re doing in terms of our processes and our approach and the players have got to follow that. I’ve been really happy with them.

They key might be getting more out of your young strikers – at some point you would hope that one of them finds a little bit of form?

I don’t like relying on hope, if I’m being honest. What we’ve got to keep doing is just keep working with them and I think the point that I made after the game is a really important point; there’s going to be a lot of talk around Jack but when Jack signed for the football club 18-months or so ago, Jack wasn’t the Jack you see now and that’s because Jack has listened and worked really hard. There’s been a lot of work that’s gone into him behind the scenes.

I know in the short-term that’s not going to give the fans a huge amount of reassurance, but what we have to do is keep working with the players we’ve got. We can’t mope or cry around the situation we’re in. We’ll be on the training pitch every day and we won’t be hoping that one of the strikers can find some consistency, we’ll just keep working with them.

Norwich, Leicester and Southampton are all teams who let you play football – could that be to your advantage?

A little bit. They’re all really good teams and all have a really different way of playing, which is going to be a challenge for us because it’s such a short turnaround with games in terms of our preparation, but I’m confident we can get the information we need into the players.

They’ve all got good coaches and they’re similar in terms of they want to try and have the ball, but they have the ball in different ways. Look, our long-term aim is obviously to get back to the Premier League and to get there is not going to be easy, so we have to face these challenges head on because, with all due respect, if we run away from these types of challenges then we don’t deserve to be in the Premier League. These are the challenges we’ve got to face head on.