Sunderland's defensive problems new manager must address to overcome League One promotion challenge

History shows just how big a task is facing the successor to little Lee Johnson if they are to salvage Sunderland’s hopes of automatic promotion.

For no club in League One in the last 10 years has finished in the top two while conceding as many goals as the Black Cats are shipping this season.

We’ve crunched a decade’s worth of stats to ask whether Sunderland can sustain a promotion push – avoiding the play-offs – amid the defensive struggles which resulted in Saturday’s 6-0 hammering at Bolton, and Johnson’s departure.

The simple – but emphatic - answer? No.

In the last three League One seasons, no team has gone up automatically while conceding more than 42 goals across the whole campaign.

And only four automatically promoted teams in the last 10 years have shipped an average of more than a goal a game.

Sunderland have conceded 39 goals this term – at 1.34 per match - and we’re only in February.

By even greater contrast, Hull City won last season’s third-tier title while shipping 38 goals all season.

Staggeringly, Sunderland’s defensive record away from home in 2021-22 – having conceded 30 times in 15 games on their league travels – is the second worst in the division, behind only Doncaster.

While they still sit third in the table, the Black Cats’ overall defensive stats rank 15th.

And despite being the top scorers in League One, such are Sunderland’s defensive struggles that their goal difference is inferior to the +16 that they had at this stage last season.

The only recently promoted club with a defensive record even nearly as poor as Sunderland’s was Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth side in 2012-13.

Yet even they only conceded 1.15 goals per game.

2017-18: Blackburn 0.87

2016-17: Sheffield United 1.02

2016-17: Bolton 0.78