Mike Dodds sends Sunderland transfer message as attacking woes continue at Stadium of Light

Mike Dodds admitted that Sunderland need to find more quality in the final third after another deeply disappointing performance at the Stadium of Light.

Dodds, like Michael Beale and Tony Mowbray before him, has struggled to find a solution to Sunderland’s striking issues this season - bringing Bradley Dack back into the side against Millwall before replacing him at half time.

Sunderland have now scored just one goal in their last four games on home turf and though the interim head coach says more depth is required, he added that it’s not necessarily as simple as going out and finding a proven striker.

“I’ve got two more games, so it’s not going to be solved in the next two games,” Dodds said.

“It is really frustrating – I can’t sit here and say that it’s not. I’ve tweaked and tinkered, and tried to find solutions for that area of the pitch. It’s obvious that it’s an area of the pitch where, this summer, the club need to do some work around. That being said though, I’m a coach and I take great pride in the work that I do. We’ll keep working with the group and what we’ve got to try to find those solutions, but I think today probably highlighted more than ever that the top end of the pitch is so vital for us. I think we look really solid, and for an hour or so, until we changed our shape, we limited them to little or no chances. If we were just a little bit better, and maybe a bit more fearless, in the top end of the pitch, then the result might have been different. But we weren’t.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily a number nine that we need,” he added.

“If you look at last year, then you wouldn’t say we had a recognised number nine, but the season was relatively successful in terms of us getting to the play-offs. I don’t think the answer is that we have to go out and sign a number nine. I think the answer is that we need more quality in the top area of the pitch. For whatever reason, Patrick Roberts hasn’t had the same season he had last year, we obviously lost Amad Diallo and Joe Gelhardt, and when you’re taking those sort of players out of the top area of the pitch, then it’s going to have an impact. But I don’t think it’s a case of if we find a number nine, all of our problems will be solved. We need more depth. It’s not just a number nine issue.

“It might be an attacking midfielder that might be the answer to some of the questions we have, it might be a tactical thing,” he added.

“Perhaps the club will want to move forward with a back three and play in a certain type of way. I think there’s a lot of positives in that we’ve got some really talented young players in that dressing room. In recent weeks, we’ve looked a lot harder team to play against, but the missing ingredient is just that little bit of extra quality in the top end of the pitch. It’ll either be players we’ve got, where we need a summer working with them, or it’ll be other players coming in. I’m not completely dismissing the players we’ve got, it might just be the fact that we need to get six or seven weeks into them in the summer, and see where they’re at.”