SO much has gone wrong at Sunderland this season that the cast list of those responsible for the club’s ongoing demise is extensive. So, it feels unfair that, at the moment, Mike Dodds is the one having to explain the slide towards the bottom half of the Championship table.

Yes, as interim head coach for the last three weeks, Dodds has to take some responsibility for the five-game losing run that has plunged the Black Cats to within nine points of the relegation zone ahead of tomorrow’s trip to promotion-chasing Southampton.

But, let’s be honest, it wasn’t the former first-team coach who decided to dismiss Tony Mowbray and appoint Michael Beale. It wasn’t Dodds who signed four strikers last summer who have proved completely incapable of handling the step into the Championship, or who sanctioned the departure of Alex Pritchard, Danny Batth and Lynden Gooch, ripping any semblance of experience out of the Sunderland squad.

Yet, as the dark clouds continue to circle above the Stadium of Light, it is the 37-year-old who finds himself having to sit in front of the press two or three times a week, taking accountability for the mess into which the club has sunk. As the losses continue to pile up, so Dodds’ reputation takes a battering. It doesn’t seem right, but it is the brutal way in which the footballing world operates.

“I’ve said this previously, the cards are definitely different from the last time I took the team,” said Dodds, whose prospects of landing the head coach job on a full-time basis – if, indeed, that was ever what he wanted – have surely suffered irreparable damage from the last three games. “Just in terms of personnel. the cards are very much different, but as I've alluded to a few times, it’s something that I want to do in the future and I’m really conscious when I answer this, this isn’t the Mike Dodds development programme.

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“This is Sunderland Football Club and we’ve got to win games of football. From a personal perspective, I’ve got to come through this moment, and I've got to show myself and the people that it’s not always going to be Disney World. The reality is there’s going to be other coaches and other clubs, probably earlier in the season that have had these moments in a season. They’ve come through them.”

Even so, those coaches didn’t have to step into an environment that had already become toxic before their role even began. Mowbray’s dismissal, the Black Cats bar fiasco, the failure to sign a striker in January, Michael Beale’s disastrous 63-day tenure – all contributory factors to the current malaise; all events that took place prior to the start of Dodds’ latest reign.

In footballing parlance, the coach was presented with a hospital pass from the off, but having agreed to step into the breach, he nevertheless accepts he will still be judged on results and performances. As a result, he insists he can only take encouragement from both the way in which the players continue to respond to him on the training ground and the positive manner in which his side rallied in the second half of Tuesday’s defeat to league leaders Leicester City.

“I’m semi-relaxed around what it is,” said Dodds. “I'm not relaxed in terms of, ‘It's three defeats and it's my name above the door’. I don't want to lose any game of football, let alone three on the bounce.

“But I'm also taking a level of comfort that the players are working, the players are listening to the messages. The players are onboard with what we're trying to do, and when we do get some of the key members of our team and squad back, there will be a better reflection of Mike Dodds as a coach.”

For now, though, the immediate focus is on tomorrow’s trip to St Mary’s to take on a Southampton side that had a blank midweek after their scheduled game against Preston was postponed because of a huge fire that broke out close to their home stadium.

That blaze has now been extinguished – Sunderland’s task tomorrow is to douse the flames of a Southampton side that are the second-highest scorers on home soil in the Championship. Having got onto the front foot in the second half of the Leicester defeat, Dodds wants his side to stay there against the Saints.

“We played against a really good team on Tuesday and we were fearless,” he said. “We were fearless for probably around 75 per cent of the game, and I think when I took the responsibility of this position, I said I felt we needed a team that was representative of the city and the fans.

“One of the things I've said to the group is that they’ve set a standard now, and set a precedent in how we should look. I hope that is the mantle going forward.”