CHRIS COLEMAN wants to lead relegated Sunderland’s fight for promotion from League One after he revealed yesterday that he has still not spoken to owner Ellis Short.

The former Wales boss saw his side slip out of the Championship 12 months after their exit from the Premier League as a result of last Saturday’s 2-1 home defeat by Burton.

He is keen to remain in the job he started in November last year, but, with Short in the United States and leaving the running of the club to chief executive Martin Bain, he admits the Black Cats are “almost floating aimlessly in the dark.”

Sunderland boss Coleman said: “It hasn’t gone the way we wanted it to go, the way we hoped for it to go, but nevertheless we are still here and I’d still like the opportunity to put things right here.

“Again, that won’t be my decision, that will be someone else’s. Whose, I don’t know, but that’s not like me saying: ‘That’s it for me.’

“I think it’s a super football club, I do. It’s a great football club. It’s in a position where it’s very tough and it’s attached with a lot of negatives because of two back-to-back relegations.

“We have not been able to stop the slide, but it’s still a great football club regardless of what anybody says.

“We’re an easy target now, you can say what you like about us, pick this level, that level, whatever, easy target and no doubt that’s what’s coming and that’s fine.

“But that won’t always be like that, it won’t. For me, for the people here, for the football club, we won’t always be where we are.”

Sunderland head for promotion-chasing Fulham tonight but will do so once again without £70,000-a-week midfielder Jack Rodwell, who has not made a senior appearance since September.

Asked if the former England international could figure, Coleman replied: “No. I don’t even know where Jack is, to be honest with you, so no, he won’t be involved.

“I’m sure that, if there was a sniff of a first team appearance, I’m not sure he’d be 100 per cent fit for it, so I don’t think that’s going to be the case.”