IT was a question that would have been easier to swerve than the first-minute tackle he is anticipating from former team-mate Phil Bardsley this afternoon. “Can you enjoy playing for Sunderland as much as playing for Manchester City?”

Adam Johnson could have avoided it, or batted it off with the kind of platitude that is increasingly becoming par for the course in the media-managed world of professional football.

To his credit though, the Sunderland winger shuffled briefly in his seat, answered “no”, and then went on to deliver a response that eloquently summed up the pressures and worries involved in playing for a side that is perennially involved in a battle in the bottom half of the table.

Enjoyable? Not really. But having given up the relatively easy option of life at Manchester City in order to be a regular starter at Sunderland, Johnson is not about to seek sympathy despite facing challenges at every turn.

“When you’re at City, you go into games knowing you’re going to win,” said the midfielder. “That’s the way it was for most home games, and confidence came from that. Now, you’re playing in a team where it’s not as simple as that.

“It’s a different kind of pressure for getting results. I’ve been asked this question loads of times in terms of comparing life at City with life here. There’s more pressure to deliver and win playing for City, but it’s a totally different pressure here in that you need to win games to avoid being involved in a relegation battle.

“It’s different at City – if you lose one game, you probably go out and win the next ten so it’s not a massive disaster. But if you lose one, then two, then three at Sunderland, it’s difficult to pull that back around.”

And if you’re Johnson, one of the few creative outlets in a side that has failed to score in three of its last four league games, the pressure to perform is even more intense.

At City, the former Middlesbrough trainee was a relatively small fish in a big pond. If he failed to deliver, a Sergio Aguero or David Silva would explode into life, rendering his struggles somewhat irrelevant.

Sunderland do not have those attacking alternatives, and there have been times this season when if Johnson has not been making a creative incursion from midfield, no one has been getting forward to support Connor Wickham or Steven Fletcher in their lone attacking role.

“It’s harder here because of that,” said Johnson. “If I’m one of the go-to guys here, then there’s expectation on me. At City, if I was having a bad day, there were ten other players who could step in. There was probably someone who could come off the bench and score a hat-trick.

“We haven’t got that luxury here. If one of our so-called creative players or strikers isn’t performing, there’s more pressure on the others.

“If you’re playing in a team with loads of world-class players, then it doesn’t matter as much if one person has an off day. In that kind of team, it’s not as dramatic if you’re not at your best, but if there are only a couple of players creating things, it stands out more.”

Hence the intensified weight of expectation, something Fabio Borini recently alluded to as a key factor in his decision not to return to the Stadium of Light this summer.

Having put himself through the wringer as Sunderland staged a remarkable recovery to stave off relegation last season, Borini did not want to risk a repeat. “I think he’s right in what he’s saying,” said Johnson. “You don’t want to be going through all of that, no matter how good it felt at the end. You’d rather be finishing tenth because last season, going into some of the games, there was a huge pressure on everyone.

“Getting beaten 5-1 at Tottenham and knowing you still had City and Chelsea coming up, it’s just so hard to be honest. You had to dig really deep, so Fabio is right in what he’s saying. That’s why we want to start off this season well – to try to avoid that and make it a much less stressful season.”

It might be October, but it remains difficult to get a handle on Sunderland’s season to date with the club having drawn five of their opening six league matches.

From a positive viewpoint, they have suffered just one defeat, and even that was a narrow one-goal reverse against QPR. From a more negative angle, they continue to search for their first victory in the league and are struggling to generate a goalscoring threat.

Johnson is reasonably satisfied with Sunderland’s performances so far, although his admission that this season’s start has been “the best” of his Black Cats career perhaps says more about previous failings than the state of the current team.

“In the first season I was here, I think we had four points at this stage,” he said. “Last season, it was a point. Now we have five. If we can beat Stoke, it’ll look a lot better, but it’s all about getting that first win.

“The mood is definitely positive. With a couple of wins, we’ll climb the table and everyone will be talking about finishing in the top half. That’s how it goes.

“If you lose again, everyone is talking about a relegation battle. That’s just how it is. But it’s still early and we certainly aren’t thinking about that (relegation).

“Don’t get me wrong, we can play a lot better. We’re nowhere near at our best, but on the positive side we do seem to be hard to beat and when we do click, we’ll win a lot of games.”