Mike Dodds reaction after Sunderland's defeat to Norwich

Dodds watched on as Sunderland slipped to a narrow 1-0 defeat at Carrow Road courtesy of Josh Sargent's strike nine minutes from time.

And here is what Sunderland's interim head coach had to say following the defeat in Norfolk:

What are your reflections on the performance?

There were spells in the game I quite liked. We need to find more consistency with that, both in and out of possession. We’ve come up against a team who have scored a lot of goals at home in recent weeks and I felt we nullified a lot of their threats but on the flipside we got the ball into good areas at times and we looked a little bit erratic, so I’m disappointed with that.

I’m naturally disappointed with the goal we conceded. I think it’s a goal we can avoid but one thing I’m not going to do is point fingers because there’s loads of moments in the game where we can be better.

We’re disappointed and upset because the players have really applied themselves this week and we’re upset for the 2,000 who have travelled, and I want to make sure I send my appreciation to them. I know that will be meaningless at the moment because the game and the result is the most important thing but we’ve got a really tough week ahead of us and we can’t dwell.

There’ll be lessons for this young group?

I don’t like the age thing because like I’ve just said, we’ve got 2,000 fans that have travelled the length of the country and they don’t care about age, they care about results and performances. We can spin that narrative if we want to spin that narrative but, ultimately, we’ve got to win games of football. I’m not naïve to that, so I’m not going to get drawn into the age thing. We’ve got to improve results and find more consistency in our performances.

Can you use last season's experience to suggest the season isn’t over?

I know we’re in a spot, I appreciate that. I watch the group work every single day and if I felt there was a level of complacency or people not being solely focused on the task at hand, which is to try and achieve the top six, then I wouldn’t select them. It would be that simple for me.

Last year we went on an amazing run and I feel we’re really close to doing really well and at the moment there are some fine margins that just aren’t going our way. That’s not an excuse, that’s not a luck thing because I believe you make your own luck and I’ve said to the players we’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing and keep focusing on how hard we work every day and I’m a firm believer the bi-product of that will be the other side of the current results that we’re getting.

It was competitive today, wasn’t it?

Yeah and look, Norwich are a really good team and Norwich are in a really good spot, particularly at home. And I felt for large spells we nullified their threats. We’ve got to do better with the goal, that’s a really hard one to take, but I’m not pointing fingers because I could point fingers at players higher up the pitch who aren’t taking their chances or I could point fingers where players are not making the right pass. So I’m not going to point fingers at anyone in particular for the goal, but what we have to do is keep doing what we’re doing on the training pitch, which is a really positive thing and sooner rather than later the tide will turn if we just stay focused and concentrate on what we’re doing

It felt as though the goal came during your best spell?

I felt the game ebbed and flowed a little bit. I felt we had spells, they had spells and we had spells again. Then unfortunately, we’re the wrong side of the result we wanted. But we’ve got to take it on the chin. We’ve got two big games coming up this week and I do feel we’re very close to turning the tide and we’ve got to concentrate on what we’re doing.

The set-up changed from last week and David Wagner admitted he was surprised Sunderland weren’t more aggressive, what is your take on that?

The way they play is quite unique to the league in terms of how they drop a midfielder into the back line and open up the back line and push their full-backs really high and aggressive on your back line. I felt we had to pick our moments as to when we were aggressive. They overload the middle of the pitch with the wide players who roll inside and I felt the middle of the pitch was something, in particular in this game, we had to be really solid with.

I don’t really remember, in the first half, them creating too much – I think Patto makes one good save from a second ball on a corner, but in the first half I thought we were really, really good and as the game opened up they had a couple of chances. As I’ve always said when I took this role on, I will do what I feel is best and those tactics will change from game-to-game to try and win every single game that we try and play.