SAM ALLARDYCE has warned his struggling Sunderland stars that they are unlikely to find a club as good as the Black Cats if they are unable to retain their Premier League status in the final six games of the season.

Sunderland head to Norwich City tomorrow for a game that could determine the outcome of the relegation battle, and Allardyce accepts there will have to be major changes if his side crashes into the Championship.

The 61-year-old oversaw a radical restructuring programme after West Ham lost their top-flight status, and while the financial impact of Sunderland being relegated would be tempered by the financial clauses that exist in most players’ contracts, there would still be an inevitable exodus if the worst was to happen next month.

The likes of Jermain Defoe, Jeremain Lens, Wahbi Khazri and Yann M’Vila would be unlikely to remain with a club playing in the second tier, but Allardyce has warned his squad that the grass is not always greener elsewhere.

“Most of the players will never get a better club than this one, in my opinion,” said the Sunderland boss. “With its facilities and supporters, and playing in the top league in the world, they really need to realise what they have.

“If the players moved on, I don’t think they’d get a better club than Sunderland. That includes the lads who joined in January. I don’t think Wahbi, (Lamine) Kone and (Jan) Kirchhoff would step up from this. Even though Kirchhoff was at Bayern Munich, he wasn’t really playing for them. They didn’t think he was quite good enough.

“I can’t see most of the lads getting a better club than this one, so let’s stay in the Premier League and make the club even better. That’s their big challenge in the next six games.”

Allardyce’s future in the event of relegation remains open to conjecture, and the former Bolton and Blackburn boss once again refused to outline his intentions if he was to find himself presiding over a Championship club come the start of the summer.

Leading West Ham out of the second tier clearly took a heavy toll, and while some managers attempt to downplay the potential devastation that accompanies relegation, Allardyce has never tried to sugar-coat the huge challenges that would present themselves if Sunderland were to suffer the drop.

Of the 67 teams that have dropped out of the top-flight since the inception of the Premier League, only 18 bounced back at the first time of asking. Sunderland did it under Roy Keane, but Allardyce accepts a monumental rebuilding job would be required if Championship football returned to Wearside next season.

“Statistics will tell you that it’s very difficult for a team to come straight back up,” he said. “If you look at the three teams that get relegated each year, then over the last 15 years, very few of them have come up first time.

“I did that analysis when I went to West Ham in 2011, and I thought, ‘Shit – I wish I’d looked at this before I took the job on’. We did get back, but there’s not too many who do.

“Relegation has a huge effect over a football club this size or the size of West Ham that needs some really delicate managing. You need to have lots of outs, lots of ins and lots of cut backs, and (there are) lots of very miserable people who you have to reinvigorate and regenerate to create a feel-good factor to get the club back to where it wants to be.”

The hope, of course, is that such a scenario can be avoided, and Sunderland will close to within a point of Norwich if they can win tomorrow, with a game in hand over Alex Neil’s side.

There are reasons to be cautiously optimistic, with the Black Cats’ only defeats since the turn of the year having come against Tottenham, Manchester City, West Ham and Leicester, and the standard of their most recent displays having been generally impressive.

However, a record of just one win from 11 represents relegation form, and Allardyce accepts it is imperative his players cut out the recurring defensive errors that have caused them so much damage.

“There’s a bottle half empty and a bottle half full, but my focus to the players is on getting a clean sheet,” he said. “That would be the most important thing, to get the clean sheet, because if you do that, you don’t have to play well, you just have to score one goal like Leicester have done in their last five games.

“I think you have to put both scenarios across to the players at certain times. There have been points during this run where you say to the lads, ‘If you carry on like this, you will win’. But you’ve got to cut the mistakes out to do that.”

Duncan Watmore has returned to full training, and is expected to secure a place in the squad at Carrow Road. Watmore, who scored in the 3-1 defeat to Norwich in the second game of the season, has been sidelined since damaging ankle ligaments in February’s 2-2 draw with Liverpool.