SUNDERLAND’S position at the foot of the Premier League table worsened when their winless start was extended to nine matches in London, and midfielder Jack Rodwell has warned that continued lapses in concentration will ruin David Moyes’ first season in charge.

Rodwell, a former player at Everton under Moyes, believes the Sunderland manager is the right man to turn things around and that they have the players in the squad to deliver results between now and January, when the transfer window opens for business.

But the Black Cats midfielder knows the five-point gap that is already separating them from safety after nine matches will only increase if they don’t find a way to stop conceding goals.

West Ham United were the latest to find a way through, even though it took them until the fourth minute of stoppage time at the end of the game for Winston Reid to strike the cruel blow.

There were claims of offside from the Sunderland defence, but Reid should never have been afforded the space to turn and shoot on the edge of the box at such a crucial stage of a game when Sunderland had defended well for the majority of it.

Rodwell said: “The goal was nothing to do with ability, it was purely concentration. It was switching off, free on the edge, a shot at goal and it is inevitable in the Premier League if you allow that. If you do that it is going to happen. Not every goal has been like that, but a lot of them, many of them have been down to lapses in concentration.”

With Arsenal on the agenda at the Stadium of Light this Saturday – after Wednesday’s trip to Southampton in the EFL Cup – the Sunderland defence is hardly going to be given an easy afternoon against the Gunners.

Even if Sunderland can surprise Arsene Wenger’s team, who were held to a home draw by Middlesbrough on Saturday, they will still be in the bottom three after ten matches, and Rodwell thinks the threat of relegation will be hanging over the club for the majority of this season.

“It’s hard to say that (we are staring relegation in the face). I would like to say it is still early in the season, but we are getting to the point now where we need to start getting back-to-back wins,” said Rodwell.

“It will be a fight to the wire. We have done it in the last few seasons and ideally we didn’t want to do it this season, but it looks like it could be another fight for the rest of the season.

“We will be prepared to do that, but I don’t want to talk about relegation just yet. It is about time we started winning. It’s must-win games already for us. I would have settled for a point in the closing stages at West Ham and I thought we had it. A lapse in concentration and it has cost us. If we had got a point here it wouldn’t be doom and gloom.

“I do believe there is enough in this dressing room, throughout the team and the staff. It is going to be a fight and we all have to be prepared to do it.”

Earlier this week Jermain Defoe, who was often an isolated figure in the final third at the London Stadium, had suggested Sunderland have gone backwards since the end of last season, when Sunderland finished strongly to stay up.

Rodwell agreed. He said: “We probably have gone a bit backwards.

“It’s not easy when you are chopping and changing all of the time, as players as managers, but that’s no excuse.

"We have a great manager here and it’s the 11 players on the pitch who have to do it.

"We have gone a bit backwards but we are the ones who can put it right. The manager will be bitterly disappointed and so are the players.”

Rodwell accepted that Sunderland should still have prevented Reid from hitting the winner on Saturday, but he also feels decisions have not been going for them when it has mattered either.

He said: “We will have to pick ourselves up. It is hard, we are all devastated. There are loads of games left, we have to try to stay positive but it was such a cruel way to end the game.

“It feels like everything is going against us at the moment. Even little bits of luck aren’t going our way. I will have to watch it again, but I think there were three West Ham players stood offside – so Jordan Pickford said, he couldn’t see anything.

“There’s no excuses, there’s plenty of football left and it’s not easy but we have to do it.

“It was the last kick of the game basically, a lack of concentration on the set piece. It was a horrible way to end the game because I thought we worked hard, deserved a point and I just don’t know … there is a sense it was offside, but no excuses because we left him free on the edge of the box.”

Sunderland boss Moyes, who is hoping for some of his injured players to return sooner rather than later, although the visit of Arsenal is likely to come too soon, agrees that his team could have done with the rub of the green a little more.

He said: “Is luck against us because of our position? I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s how it works.”

The former Manchester United manager – who has had to deal with suggestions a Chinese consortium interested in buying the club would like to bring back Sam Allardyce – also admits his team have to become more resilient.

“It comes down to the pressure we’ve had to take in games,” explained Moyes.

“If you are accepting the opposition coming on to you it can affect you in the end.”