Chris Coleman battling negativity of Ellis Short's ownership but calls on players to stand up

Consecutive defeats against Birmingham City and Ipswich Town have left the Black Cats second-bottom in the Championship and fighting an uphill battle to survive.

The mood on Wearside is predictably low after another desperate display and Coleman admits there is a ‘drag’ he has to to find a way of halting the slide.

He said: “As big as this club is, when a club like this is going the wrong way, it feels very, very heavy.

“But, on the other hand, the atmosphere against Hull (a fortnight ago) was fantastic.

“We’ve got to try to get that more often.

“We only get it if we give it and it doesn’t work the other way.

“We’ve got to earn that atmosphere more often.

“I’ve only been here two months, but I can already feel the drag of such a big club on the back of relegation. The chairman wants to sell, it’s a huge negative.

“We’ll do our best not to get sucked down with all that. It’s up to me, the staff and the players to find a way from where we are.

“Thankfully, there are still loads of games left. Every game that goes by and we’re still in the bottom three, that tears another strip off you.

“By hook or by crook, we’ve got to get away from it.”

One of Coleman’s biggest challenges is to change a recurring mental fragility to a squad that again showed little capacity to respond after conceding the first goal against Ipswich.

Just as against Birmingham City earlier in the week, in the 3-1 reverse at St Andrew’s, Sunderland conceded yet another goal just before half-time to all but settle the game.

Coleman joked that a sports psychologist might help him, but the message for his players was clear.

Despite the problems, he expects them to stand up in the final 16 games.

He said: “I don’t know about one [psychologist] for the team, but I may need one.

“If you’re standing round waiting for someone to give you a shake, that’s no good.

“If you’re standing around waiting for advice all the time, or for someone to get you up, that’s no good.

“You need to get yourself up.

“As a manager, we give pep talks, we get into players but they’ve got to have a bit of that themselves.

“Not one or two of them, all of them.

“We’re bottom three, away to Bristol City next week and, going forward, we either succumb to it, think it’s too much for us, or we can’t match the challenge and become engulfed in it all.

“Or, alternatively, the other way of doing it is being bigger than that, not swallowing it and not doing that.

“It doesn’t guarantee you success, but it guarantees you an easy night’s sleep.

“We’re in that position now.

“I’d say to some of the players, ‘stop eking your way through 90 minutes’, ‘stop thinking you can get away with it’, you absolutely can’t do that.

“If you come out put yourself out and fail, that’s OK, fair enough, but at least put yourself out there from minute one, not try to go under the radar.

“There’s no other way of doing it.

“Unless someone’s got a better idea, I’ve I’m happy to listen to it.

“But, in my experience, I’ve never got anything from doing it half heartedly.

“You go all the way in, or you go all the way out.”