Clarity and candour are all-important to Dick Advocaat so it should come as no surprise that Sunderland’s new head coach has wasted little time issuing his players with specific rules of engagement.

“I say: ‘Listen, if you do what I want I am a really friendly man – if not, then I am not so nice,’” said the 67-year-old known as the Little General in his native Netherlands. “It’s that simple.”

So far there has been no cause for Gus Poyet’s successor to reveal his darker side but it remains early days. “I haven’t been unfriendly yet,” he said. “But that’s normal in the beginning. After West Ham I will know what I have to do.”

Before Sunderland’s squad headed to Newcastle airport and a flight to Stansted for Saturday’s match at Upton Park, Advocaat conducted a postmortem on last weekend’s 4-0 home defeat by Aston Villa.

The much-travelled former Holland coach watched Poyet’s last stand live on television at home in the Netherlands in a state of incredulity. “I’ve told the players that, if I was the trainer beside the touchline, I would have been on the pitch when Aston Villa scored their fourth goal. That means something is wrong.”

Not the type to shy away from confrontation, Advocaat did not worry about treading on dressing room sensibilities. “You could see that something was going wrong in the players’ heads,” he said. “When Aston Villa scored their fourth goal, five players were standing still. Players were walking instead of running. It is a matter of changing their attitudes.”

This has involved stressing to his squad that it is a team game. “It’s important that we do not play as individuals,” he said. “We have to play as a unit with the ball and without it. If we start playing again as a team, with everyone fighting for each other, then I’m not afraid of the results. We have enough quality. The good thing is that I can see the players want to prove themselves to the new manager – that’s always a good sign.”

The Wearside skies were beginning to brighten in the wake of Friday morning’s solar eclipse when Advocaat spoke publicly for the first time since his installation. With Sunderland one point above the relegation zone many fear the omens are bad but he was having none of it.

“I’ve never been relegated,” he said. “I always have the feeling I can never go down. If you see what I have done in the past, I’ve been quite successful.”

Eschewing the club tie for an open-neck blue-and-white striped shirt he gave every indication of a man who would revel in doing things his way. “I’m enjoying it, because of my experience,” he said. “That’s why it’s always better to take an older one than a younger one.”

Sunderland have said Advocaat – who concluded his first media address with a thumbs-up sign as he exited stage left – is here for nine games only but he knows possession is nine-tenths of the law.

“Let’s just wait and see what happens over the next two months,” he said when asked about possibly staying longer. “I’ve never lost my hunger.” His job description embraces nothing more than coaching but, as befits such an evidently hands-on figure, he seemed keen to extend the parameters of his role. “I like to discuss about players [to be signed] and that kind of thing,” he said. “Getting the right players in is very important.

“I like to control games, to have the ball, but from what I’ve seen from the majority of the games is that Sunderland are running without the ball.”

It probably helps his cause that Adam Johnson, who is on police bail after being arrested on suspicion of sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl, is available at West Ham following the lifting of a club suspension, but Advocaat has also included in the squad Duncan Watmore, a young winger consistently overlooked by Poyet.

Although Advocaat had never spoken to Lee Congerton until he received a call from Sunderland’s sporting director on Monday morning, they have a mutual friend in Frank Arnesen who, three weeks ago, sounded him out about a potentially impending vacancy on Wearside.

“I told him: ‘I’m available,’” Advocaat said. “It would have been harder for someone younger, with less experience to come in now but I have a good feeling about everything.”