SEB LARSSON admits he would be “embarrassed” if Sunderland were to lose yet another manager because of the playing squad’s repeated failings.

The Black Cats head to Bournemouth on Saturday with David Moyes’ position coming under increased pressure after a failure to win any of the opening ten league games.

Ellis Short is standing by Moyes at the moment, but the mounting frustration that threatened to spill over during last weekend’s home hammering to Arsenal will only intensify if Sunderland’s winless run continues on the south coast.

Since joining Sunderland in June 2011, Larsson has played under a remarkable seven different permanent managers, and as he prepares to enter the final six months of his current deal, the Swede admits he will find it hard to look at himself in the mirror if the tally reaches eight.

“Without using it as an excuse, it has been hard while I have been here, the amount of times we’ve had to start over,” said Larsson, who is hoping to make his first appearance of the season at the weekend after completing a quicker-than-expected return from knee surgery. “Ultimately, though, it comes back to us as players, and if we perform well on the pitch, managers aren’t going to go.

“If you’re asking me do I want the manager to stay, then the answer would be yes, without a doubt. To be brutally honest, I would be embarrassed if another manager had to go during my time here.

The Northern Echo:

“It’s happened far too often, and we need to sort this out with the group we’ve got now. That’s the bottom line.”

Sam Allardyce’s summer departure was out of the squad’s hands, while Dick Advocaat walked away because he did not feel he could guide Sunderland to safety last season, but Larsson concedes that Steve Bruce, Martin O’Neill, Paolo di Canio and Gus Poyet were all forced to leave because performances on the pitch were unacceptable.

Yet for all the upheaval he has encountered, Larsson has not been relegated in a Sunderland shirt, with the generally poor form of the last five-and-a-half years being punctuated by fleeting patches of much-improved performances.

While players have come and gone in the last few seasons, the core of the squad has remained, and there have been times when it has been more than good enough to compete with the very best teams in the Premier League.

Sadly, though, those purple patches have not lasted long, and Larsson admits the wild fluctuations in form are one of the most frustrating aspects of Sunderland’s story during his time in the North-East.

“The major disappointment is that the core of this group has shown what it is capable of in the past,” he said. “We’ve had good runs and good results, and it’s felt as though we’ve reached spells where we’ve had something to build on. We’ve felt like we’ve been moving in the right direction, and yet it hasn’t happened.

“It is difficult when you start over constantly, like we have been doing. I don’t even know how many managers there’s been since I’ve been here, but obviously every time the manager changes there is a wider change and you find yourself building again.

“That’s the situation, but let’s not use it as an excuse because it is what it is and we have to deal with it and make sure we do better, it’s as simple as that.”

Having watched his side ship three goals in the space of six-and-a-half minutes last weekend, David Moyes has been prioritising defensive discipline on the training ground this week.

Bournemouth put six goals past Hull in their second most recent home outing, and having been part of a team that became incredibly difficult to beat under Allardyce last season, Larsson accepts it is time to go back to basics in an attempt to make the current Sunderland side more robust.

“This squad is better than where we are, definitely,” he said. “But saying it is one thing, showing it and proving it is another. Should we be sitting on two points? No chance. But we have to do something about it otherwise the words mean nothing.

“We have to get the basics right and make ourselves hard to beat. That’s where you have to start when things are not going well, although you should really be starting like that right from the beginning.

“We all hold our hands up to say we haven’t been hard enough to beat this season, and in the Premier League if that’s the case, you’re going to struggle. It’s about starting off by getting the basics right, and getting them 100 per cent right, and then moving on from there. We’re at the point where you have to get a result no matter how it looks.”

Larsson’s return should help, with the Swede having confounded the gloomier predictions that suggested he would be sidelined until Christmas when he underwent surgery in the summer.

“Things have gone well, and I’ve been able to come back much quicker than expected, which is brilliant,” said the midfielder. “It was only really three weeks ago, when I started going back outside, that I thought it might be achievable.

“But you still need to go through the process of getting back, and I’ve managed to do that. I’m just buzzing to be back on the pitch with the boys now, and to be able to do all the things they do and join in fully.”