Do Sunderland players have the fight to beat the drop? Chris Coleman on the dressing room

The Sunderland boss was left infuriated by his team’s defending in Saturday’s 2-0 Sky Bet Championship defeat at home to Preston North End.

And he was in no mood to protect them from their defensive shortcomings.

They Wearsiders again conceded from a set-piece, as Paul Gallagher’s 50th-minute free-kick headed in at the back post by unmarked Deepdale striker Sean Maguire to make the crucial breakthrough at the Stadium of Light.

Coleman knows that his bottom-placed team lack resilience, but he does not think that a quiet dressing room is the root cause of that.

He said: “If it had been a 10-pass move and they’d cut through us with brilliant individual skill, that would be one thing, but it wasn’t that, it was one free-kick into the box and it wasn’t difficult to defend, but we didn’t defend it.

“That’s what cost us the game.

“Once we went a goal down, we weren’t getting back into it.

“It was just more disappointment and it’s a common theme here.

“We don’t come back when we go a goal down.

“Most dressing rooms I’ve been involved with now are very different to the ones of yesteryear.

“You don’t really get a lot of that [arguing].

“You get one or two who are vocal, but, predominantly in every club, they say less in dressing rooms.

“You always get one or two characters that are prepared to say something, but mostly players are fairly quiet.

“It’s not an indictment of modern players, it’s just the way they are.

“I’ve been in successful dressing rooms that are quiet too and it’s not the case that if it’s noisy it’s going to be successful.

“That’s just the way modern players are.”