Mike Dodds names the Sunderland player opposition bosses are raving about in honest recruitment assessment

Mike Dodds says some of Sunderland's recruits will need time to show their full ability and said the positives of the club's approach shouldn't be lost despite the club's poor recent run.

Injuries to some of Dodds' established players have taken a major toll on the squad in their recent six-game losing run, with many of those recruited over the last couple of transfer windows struggling to hold down a regular place in the starting XI.

Sunderland's interim head coach said he understood why the club's 'model' proved to be such a talking point and added that no club can always expect to get it exactly right in recruitment. Dodds also added that it produced a number of major success stories and also said Sunderland's growing contingent of homegrown talent was worth celebrating.

Dodds said opposition managers and coaches were often mentioning Dan Neil as a player of huge promise and consistent performances. "The model is always going to divide opinion and it will continue to divide opinion," Dodds said.

"With recruitment, and it is the same at every single football club in the country, sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't. Sometimes a player moves and it doesn't quite work, and then he moves to another club and he flies and you go, 'what happened there?' Sometimes players just have good fits and sometimes it doesn't quite work.

"I keep going back to Jack Clarke, he was playing U21 football at Spurs, he'd had some loans that didn't go very well but he wasn't a bad player, it just didn't work out. He came to us in League One and he helped us get out of the league, but he wasn't the player we know now. People will talk about the model but for everyone that hasn't quite worked, we could sit here and name the ones that have. You can talk about Jack, Dan Ballard, and then there's developing your own as well.

"Dan Neil - every time we go and see the opposition after the game, the opposition manager 9 times out of 10 is talking about Dan Neil: 'What a player he is, one of your own', lots of clubs would love to have one of those. Anthony Patterson, Jobe Belllingham... if he decided he wanted to leave the club tomorrow how much would he be worth at 18? A second-year scholar with his number of Championship appearances. That's the positive of it, but of course there are always going to be the ones that don't quite work out. It'll continue to be a discussion point, both when it works and when it doesn't."

Sunderland face QPR at the Stadium of Light on Saturday afternoon looking to put an end to their losing run, but knowing that they will have to do so despite an ever-lengthening injury list. Dodds has some major dilemmas in defence in particular, with Jenson Seelt and Luke O'Nien both unavailable and Dan Ballard a major doubt.