IN most ordinary seasons, if Sunderland were heading into their final three matches with 84 points on the board, they would be all-but-assured automatic promotion. Clearly, when it comes to League One, this has not been an ordinary campaign.

They might only have lost three of their 43 matches, but when Sunderland kick off against promotion rivals Portsmouth this afternoon, they will do so in fourth position in the table.

Win their remaining three games, and they will finish with a total of 93 points. However, if Barnsley beat Blackpool and Bristol Rovers in the next seven days, they will end up with 94.

“This season, whoever doesn’t finish in the top two are probably going to be able to point to club-record sequences along the way,” said Sunderland boss Jack Ross. “We’ve had one or two this season, and I think Luton, Barnsley and Portsmouth have all had them too.

“The truth is, only two of those teams are going to go up automatically, so statistically, this season is going to be a real anomaly. A lot of clubs are going to be able to point out the fact that, ordinarily, those records would have been enough for them. It’s just not going to be the case this year for two of those teams.”

Sunderland are still hoping to scramble back into the top two, but whether they finish in an automatic-promotion place or in the play-offs, Ross will still be able to take pride from his players’ efforts.

To some, missing out on a top-two finish would be a failure. Ross identified automatic promotion as his main ambition before a ball was kicked, but having inherited a club that had just nine senior professionals on the training ground when he replaced Chris Coleman last summer, the Scotsman insists it is important to retain some perspective about what Sunderland have achieved.

“Because we’ve been in and around the top two or three positions in the league all season, it maybe distorts what it was like here,” said Ross. “There’s a very false perception that we should have run away with the league.

“Listen, everybody has their own opinion on it and people will say I’m deflecting (criticism) away, I’m not. I could walk away from this tomorrow and know I’ve done the job properly because this place wasn’t in a great position. In any other industry that’s had two consecutive massive disappointments, it is not easy.

“I think it’s about trying to convince people there is a longer-term progression, but the nature of football means the longer term is not often either appreciated or enabled because of the short-term need for success.”

Nevertheless, as he ponders the future beyond the end of the season, whether in the Championship or League One, Ross is satisfied that some important building blocks are now in place. Whatever happens between now and the end of May, there will not be a need for the kind of major summer upheaval that has turned Sunderland upside down on an all-too-regular basis in recent years.

“Foundations? I’m not even sure in some parts that we’ve got to putting the foundations in,” said Ross. “All we’ve done is make the ground safe to put foundations in. That’s where we were.

“In layman’s terms of building things, you can’t just put foundations in. You need to know it’s all right to put them in, and that’s probably where this club was at. We had to make it solid enough to even put them in, and I’d say that’s what we’ve done.

“After that, how you put the right structure in place to carry it forward is still a work in progress.

“When you say it like that, it makes you understand how much hard work we’ve got ahead of us. But when you say it in football terms, you don’t always get that opportunity.”