SUNDERLAND’S hierarchy are confident the current uncertainty over the head coach position will not drag on into the summer – and intend to complete the appointment of a new permanent boss in the immediate aftermath of this weekend’s final game of the season.

A bitterly-disappointing campaign will reach its conclusion on Saturday lunchtime when the Black Cats host Sheffield Wednesday in their final fixture. The game at the Stadium of Light will also mark the end of Mike Dodds’ latest spell in interim charge, with the stand-in boss set to return to his former role as part of the club’s senior coaching staff this summer.

A new permanent head coach will be appointed in his wake, with majority owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus and sporting director Kristjaan Speakman having spent the last couple of weeks firming up their plans.

With a worrying sense of drift having been apparent in the last month or so, as Sunderland have tumbled down the Championship table, there is a strong determination that a sense of stability is restored as quickly as possible.

A list of potential candidates has been whittled down this month, to the point where sources claim the Black Cats’ ownership group are now confident they will be able to move quickly once the current campaign is completed.

Reports in the German media over the weekend strongly linked Sunderland with Bayern Munich’s current Under-19s boss, Rene Maric, and there is believed to have been contact between senior Black Cats figures and the Bundesliga club.

Maric, an Austrian 31-year-old, worked under Marco Rose at RB Salzburg, Borussia Monchengladbach and Borussia Dortmund before leaving Germany to work as part of Jesse Marsch’s first-team coaching set-up at Leeds United in the summer of 2022.

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He left Leeds when Marsch was dismissed the following February, and joined Bayern Munich’s coaching set-up last November. He was promoted to his current role as the head of the club’s Under-19s in February, and boasts extensive youth-development experience, having previously worked with the likes of Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham in Germany.

Domestic candidates that have been considered are believed to include Paul Heckingbottom, who is currently out of work following his dismissal from Sheffield United in December, and Danny Rohl, who has done an excellent job to guide Sheffield Wednesday to the brink of Championship safety despite having inherited a seemingly impossible situation when he took over at Hillsborough last October.

Heckingbottom was one of the candidates seriously considered by the Sunderland board before the appointment of both Alex Neil and Michael Beale, and still has his backers within the corridors of power at the Stadium of Light.

Rohl has impressed during his stint in charge of Wednesday, but has hinted he would like to stay in Sheffield if, as now looks likely, the season ends with his current employers still in the Championship. The German 34-year-old is contracted to Hillsborough until the end of next season, and provided the Owls stay up, the Sheffield Wednesday hierarchy will ensure it is extremely expensive for anyone to prise Rohl from South Yorkshire.