"I was tempted to click and then I said 'no'," revealed Poyet, whose struggling side visit his old employers Tottenham Hotspur on Monday night. "I was going to look at pre-season plans in the Championship. We've not put anything in place for that yet and I nearly looked. But if you're planning for games in the Championship you're expecting to be there. I'm not."

Such optimism is far from universal. After all Sunderland are bottom, seven points adrift of Norwich in 17th, and have not won a Premier League game since their 3-0 victory at Newcastle United on 1 February. There is also the Monday night problem; they have failed to win a match on one for 12 years.

Poyet is less concerned about that statistic than his team's decline in the post-Newcastle period. "I thought we'd clicked," said the Uruguayan, who knows his players must make the games they hold in hand on rivals count. "I thought 'that's it, yes, now everything's going to work out fine'. I was wrong."

He has had a bad week. By the time West Ham United won 2-1 on Wearside last Monday, Louw van Niekerk, a leading knee surgeon, had informed him he requires a cruciate ligament repair this summer which will necessitate Sunderland's manager supervising pre-season training on crutches.

"Just thinking about the recovery from the operation makes me feel sick," Poyet said. "I was just playing head tennis with the coaching staff and I went to turn and it just went. Now it's killing me. It's really bad."

In recent weeks far too many Sunderland players have seemed to be playing on one leg and, like a man trapped in a lift and pressing every available button, he has responded by switching from his tried and trusted 4-1-4-1 formation to experiment with new systems and personnel.

Variously playing five at the back, starting Adam Johnson on the bench and deploying both Liam Bridcutt and Lee Cattermole in central midfield have drawn criticism from supporters but the team's problems are somewhat deeper-rooted.

Multiple flaws and mental fragilities were masked by the run to Wembley and the Capital One Cup final which Sunderland lost to Manchester City but they are now being fully exposed in the most unflattering lights. "You can have an idea, a little doubt about a player and then you say 'yes I was right'," Poyet said.

Teams often dip after reaching League Cup finals and some Sunderland fans wonder whether it might have been better if Paolo Di Canio's then side had been thrown out of the competition after fielding an ineligible player in the second round victory over MK Dons.

Instead the minor clerical error which led to Ji Dong-won playing in four league fixtures and one cup game without international clearance led to the club paying the Premier League a six-figure fine and the matter being discreetly hushed up. It finally leaked last week, leaving Poyet – who was not on Wearside at the time – conceding he could have had no complaints had a points deduction been imposed.

That is not going to happen but this sorry episode seems emblematic of a season in which Poyet is being asked to mend the damage caused by the former director of football Roberto De Fanti's importation of 13 foreign players last summer and Di Canio's disastrous opening to the campaign. Certain problems with the dressing room's "old guard" do not help either.