SINCE the start of the year, and ignoring goalless draws, Sunderland have picked up points in ten matches. Jermain Defoe has scored in seven of them.

His goals since the start of January have been directly responsible for the Black Cats claiming nine of the 20 points they have garnered in that period, and even though he barely featured for the first two months of Sam Allardyce’s reign, his stoppage-time equaliser at Stoke on Saturday was his 14th league goal of the season.

Only Harry Kane, Sergio Aguero, Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and Romelu Lukaku have scored more, and four of those players play for teams in the top four positions in the table. The other might well be leaving Everton for more than £40m this summer.

Defoe, on the other hand, plays in a side stranded in the relegation zone with three games remaining. With Sunderland having tumbled back into the bottom three as a result of Newcastle’s victory over Crystal Palace, he could find himself playing for a Championship side by the end of next month. Had he not agreed to move to Wearside a year-and-a-half ago, however, it is safe to assume the Black Cats’ fate would already be sealed.

“We have to thank him for the 14 goals because, without them, I think we would already be relegated,” said Allardyce, whose initial doubts about Defoe’s ability to play as a lone striker have been well and truly dismissed in the last two months.

“He’s got 14 Premier League goals now in a struggling side. One of our big problems is that the rest of our players have not chipped in with enough goals. I think the nearest to him is five (Patrick van Aanholt), that’s all.

“Without him, we probably would have already been relegated, but he’s kept us in the picture, in a position where we can still avoid relegation.”

Whenever Sunderland’s prospects of avoiding the drop have been discussed in the last few months, Defoe’s presence has generally been cited as the key factor falling in their favour.

That creates its own pressure, but the 33-year-old shows no sign of buckling under the responsibility that has been piled on his shoulders.

Saturday’s game was a perfect illustration of why he remains so integral to his side’s survival hopes as he single-handedly rescued a point from a match that looked like it would end in a hugely damaging defeat.

Sunderland had toiled through 90 fruitless minutes, producing what was comfortably their worst display since the transformative influx of new players in the January transfer window.

Trailing to Marko Arnautovic’s controversial opener, with the Austrian firing home after Peter Crouch had clambered over Younes Kaboul to nod the ball down in the penalty area, Defoe had already fashioned the Black Cats’ best chance of a leveller when he juggled the ball adeptly with his back to goal before swivelling to fire over the crossbar.

That looked like being that, and there still appeared to be little on when the former England international received the ball from Yann M’Vila in the second minute of stoppage time. Spinning away from his marker, Geoff Cameron, on the edge of the area though, he lured the Stoke centre-half into a clumsy lunge that brought him crashing to the floor.

The contact was minimal, but it was enough of a foul to warrant a penalty. Defoe had been looking for it, but that is what top centre-forwards do. That he duly dispatched the spot-kick beyond Stoke goalkeeper Jakob Haugaard was never in doubt.

“He scores when you need him to, and they’re vital goals,” said Allardyce. “The myth about not being able to score goals up front on his own is gone because his opportunities to score goals were very few and far between. But when we needed him most, he did it by a penalty – and he got the penalty himself with his own ability.”

The equaliser keeps Sunderland within a point of Newcastle, and the Black Cats continue to have a game in hand on their North-East rivals. With Newcastle travelling to Aston Villa this weekend, it is safe to assume the Magpies’ winning run will continue, but provided Sunderland can take four points from their back-to-back home games with Chelsea and Everton, they will still head into their final game of the season at Watford knowing a victory will keep them safe.

Their fate remains in their own hands, but they will have to improve on their performance at the Britannia Stadium if they are to secure the points they are going to need in the next fortnight.

For the first time, it felt as though the enormity of the situation had got to Sunderland’s players. They can point to what should perhaps have been a first-half penalty when Cameron’s flailing arm made contact with the ball and grumble about their misfortune. They can argue that Crouch should have been penalised for climbing all over Kaboul and bemoan the fact they were behind in the first place.

But they cannot ignore the sloppy passing and errant decision-making that peppered their play. This was an alarmingly lacklustre display for the most part, and while Sunderland’s defensive durability largely remained intact, the lack of attacking creativity prior to Defoe’s dramatic late intervention was troubling.

If Sunderland are to survive, they are going to have to be positive and take the game to their opposition. A fear of failure is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but trying to shield the players from the gravity of the situation in which they find themselves would be an ill-advised move.

“Sunderland is a very close-knit city, and the fans are very close,” said Allardyce. “They want to touch and have contact with the players as much as they can. But I don’t see anything wrong with that.

“We’re paid to take the pressure, so let’s take it and play our best. Let’s accept where we are, and let the pressure bring the best out of us so we can make everyone happy at the end of the season.”