Sam Allardyce fearful of ‘mammoth’ task at Sunderland

Sunderland 0 Southampton 1<br>

The 61-year-old, who has built his reputation on stabilising and rebuilding struggling clubs, saw the Black Cats slip to a third defeat of his four-game reign and he does not accept he has plenty of time to turn things around.

“No, I haven’t, no. We are relegation favourites because we are in the bottom three and getting out of the bottom three is a long haul now. When you have got fewer points than games, as many fewer points than games as we have got, then we have got a mammoth task just to get out of the trouble we are in at the moment. There’s no point in trying to bullshit anybody: it’s going to be a long haul to get where we need to get.