Mike Dodds reflects on frustrating start to latest Sunderland tenure and explains why he's staying upbeat

Mike Dodds says he is relishing the challenge of trying to turn round Sunderland's form and believes the dressing room are fully behind him despite a frustrating start to his latest stint as interim head coach.

The Black Cats fell to a 1-0 defeat to Norwich City on Saturday, their fourth Championship loss on the bounce and one that has left them nine points adrift of the play-off places. Dodds insisted after the game that he believed Sunderland could still make an impact on the race for sixth and that they were 'very close' to 'turning the tide' on their poor form.

The interim head coach said he believed some key absentees offered significant mitigation to the two recent defeats, and added that he has seen enough positives to be confident that his side will return to winning ways before long.

"I feel really comfortable in the job," Dodds said, asked how he was finding life back at the helm.

"I won't make excuses either for this football club or myself so this isn't making excuses, but I think the most experienced manager in the world sat here with the cards that I've been dealt in terms of arguably one of the best central defenders in the league suspended, one of the best wingers who has something like 35% of our goal contributions out injured.. add on top of that we've got a really tough fixture list. I think the most experienced person sitting here wouldn't be able to do anything different.

"I feel the group are completely with me and so I feel really comfortable. but it's also not lost me that we need to change the results and that's a challenge I'm running towards rather than away from. I'm really excited about the next two games even though they're really tough games, because I'm coming up against two of the best teams in the league and two really good coaches, and I'm looking forward to pitting my wits against them.

"The results haven't gone our way but I work with the players every day and if I had a group who I felt weren't listening to me or weren't giving everything for me, I'd be honest with the football club and the people above me. But I think the group are fully behind me, we had 45 minutes last Saturday where we set up a certain way and it didn't work, which I take a certain level of responsibility for. The second 45 and today I thought we set up really well, and we lost the game today on a fine margin and that can go either way. I'm enjoying where I am, I'm not enjoying the results and there'll be some finger pointing at me but if I want to do this [full time] in the future, I've got to be comfortable with that."

Leicester City visit the Stadium of Light on Tuesday night before the Black Cats travel to Southampton next weekend, bringing to an end a challenging week of fixtures.