The international break can often be considered an inconvenience for clubs in the Premier League and Championship. The stop-start nature of the season has the potential to disrupt the flow of the campaign and stymie any rhythm. For Sunderland, however, it’s a break which couldn’t be more welcome.
Battered and bruised, Mike Dodds’ young squad have endured their most challenging period, arguably in their careers, since the turn of the new year – a year which started brightly with a 2-0 win over Preston North End. Some 12 weeks and 13 games later, Sunderland just about scraped their next clean sheet in Saturday’s drab affair with Queens Park Rangers. It’s been that kind of run.
Within that timeframe, Sunderland have been humiliated, on and off the field, by their fierce rivals Newcastle United in the FA Cup and have won just two of 12 league games – the last of which coming on February 10 in a 3-1 win over Plymouth Argyle. The club moved on from their nine-week experiment with Michael Beale as head coach but have failed to see any upturn since reinstalling Dodds as interim head coach, with Jack Clarke’s ankle ligament injury and a six-game losing streak compounding things.
Mercifully, Sunderland were able to put an end to that losing streak against Marti Cifuentes’ side to avoid etching their names into the club’s history books for the wrong reasons, but that was about as much as they could take from what was otherwise a forgetful afternoon at the Stadium of Light. They have taken just one point from a possible 21 over the course of the last seven games and scored just four goals.
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It was telling Dodds described this performance as the worst of his current third tenure – that despite being the first point of this spell. Although not lost on him, the 37-year-old continues to brush aside the enormity of pressure building on Wearside in a season whereby the club have lost 18 of their 38 games so far. But this break is timely for Dodds, too. The necessity to regroup and take stock of what has been a bruising number of weeks.
“To a degree it’s come at a good time,” he admitted. “They’ll [the players] be in for three or four days and they’ll have a couple of days off and then we’ve got a three or four day lead into the Cardiff game. Like every game in this league there’s no easy games. I’ve seen a lot of Cardiff this year and I think they’re really well coached and really well drilled out of possession, their home form is strong, and then we’ve got a quick turnaround into the Blackburn game.
“We’ll review [this game]. I think it’s important we stick to our processes, and I think we need to have a real honest conversation around that performance because I was particularly unhappy with it, which I haven’t labelled at the group in the previous four performances.
“From our perspective, internally, it’s a really important two weeks to keep drilling home what we want because out of the five games I’ve taken that’s been my biggest disappointment and we got a point from it. In terms of the fans, I think it’s important they spend time with family and loved ones and realise when we come back the squad will have a little bit more depth to it and a little bit more quality to it.
“I think we will get two or three bodies back closer to the team. Corry, Bradley and Aji are all training with the team, so they’ll be huge positives going into the Easter weekend.
“Pat and Jack, whether it’s going to be a weekend too early for them we will see, but you have got five players there who are a big boost. We’ve just got to keep sticking to what we believe is right and I’m quietly confident that once we get one [win] it will snowball quite quickly in the other direction.”
It’s true the impact of some of the injuries Dodds has had to contend with have crippled Sunderland. That said, it also enlightens the broad chasm between what you would class as Sunderland’s strongest XI and those thereafter, with six of the starting line-up against QPR joining the club over the course of the last 10-months.
Luis Hemir led the line once more and had just 15 touches – none of which came in the opposition penalty area, before being substituted before the hour. Adil Aouchiche was handed a first start in three months and while there were flashes of potential from the Frenchman, there was little conviction – likewise Romaine Mundle. Jobe Bellingham, Sunderland’s most influential signing over the last two transfer windows, was rotated into a deeper midfield role alongside Dan Neil and completed all but one of his attempted passes in what was otherwise a relatively passive game at both ends of the spectrum, neither here nor there. Callum Styles and Leo Hjelde, two of Sunderland’s three January recruits, formed the left side of Dodds’ defence and while they were able to walk off with a first clean sheet since New Year’s Day, there remains plenty of scepticism around the pair.
And therein lies the key issue for Sunderland – not just over the course of this international break but heading into what will be a pivotal summer in terms of how the club will be perceived next season and its promotion credentials. Dodds must find a way to reignite his squad of players as far as their confidence levels go, if they are to avoid potentially being dragged into a relegation dust-up in the final month of the season – the gap remaining at nine points ahead of the break but with trips to Cardiff City, Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion to come in their next five games, Dodds will be keen to get that elusive win to see them over the line.
“You don’t need me to say that it’s really important. But I’ll be honest, none of us are looking in that direction,” Dodds said of being potentially being pulled into a relegation battle.
“We’ve shown enough in spells that we’ve got more than enough to be looking up and not down. I think if we had been completely railroaded or run all over then I’d be more concerned. There’s also context that we’ve had some circumstances whether that be player unavailability mixed into the fact in three of the games you’re playing against top six teams. So there is some context to the situation. But our focus is to get back to winning ways and start climbing the table again.
“One thing with footballer’s is that as long as they’ve got complete clarity and they see progression I think you can keep them going in the right direction, and I think that’s what we have at the moment with the group.
“We provide a huge amount of clarity to them in terms of the expectation as an individual and the expectation of the group. And there has been a level of progress away from what is the most important fact, which is the result.
“They’re not skipping down the corridors; they understand that we haven’t won for a period of time but they also understand what we’re trying to do. At the moment, we’ve just come up against some good opposition and we haven’t had our fully fit armoury to go up against them.
“I would feel a lot more uncomfortable if I had a fully fit squad to pick from and the results were the way they were. The group, generally, are okay and understand the severity of where we’re at and have to start winning games quickly, but they also have real clarity on what we’re trying to do.”
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Dodds remains defiant in his messages so far during this interim spell, as well as the defence of his players to the point he would ‘throw myself under the bus to protect them.’ Courageous as that may be, there are lessons to be learned across the board at the Stadium of Light during this two-week break. It’s an opportunity for personnel at all levels to take stock of how a simmering season now lay in tatters. For those players fortunate enough to be selected by their countries, it’s an opportunity to escape the sometimes-suffocating walls of a team in decline, where they can take on board fresh ideas and conversations.
An exhausted Neil described the chance to use the break as ‘a big reset’ for all on Wearside. The midfielder, perhaps, the embodiment of a club having dropped to its knees over recent weeks in that moment, and yet the 22-year-old also represents what the club are doing well in producing young talent. The contrasting emotions of being able to acknowledge that currently compared to the end of last season are stark, however.
“I’m really conscious of trying to spin positives, but if you would have said four or five years ago that you’d have a young, vibrant team with huge upside and, from a finance perspective, loads of assets and you’re playing in the Championship, I think that would have looked like a real positive a few years ago,” said Dodds.
“But we did finish sixth last year and [now] we’re sitting in mid-table. The expectation of the football club is the expectation and you’re never going to change that, and we shouldn’t try and change that because this football club belongs in the Premier League and the aspiration is to get there as soon as possible. I do feel there are lots of positives, but at the moment it doesn’t feel like that. The biggest positive is to win a game of football.
“I’m not going to say the players we’ve got aren’t good enough because I think they are, I just think a few of them need a little bit more help and that help will come when we get some of our high performers back.
“I always knew going into this period it was almost the perfect storm for bad news. But I’ve seen enough in the games, not consistently, for me to have a belief that what we’re doing is right. We will all be really stronger for it when we do come out of the other end. That being said, we do need that first win.”
Sunderland broke for last season's March international break having taken five points from 21, losing four of those games. They came back re-energised and took 16 points from a possible 24 without defeat which, ironically, included games against Cardiff, West Brom and Watford, all of whom they still have to play this season, to clinch a play-off spot. Although they won’t reach the play-offs this time, they need a similar reaction from this hiatus.
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