I'm Going Down

One of my work colleagues had thoughtfully left the sports pages of Monday's Daily Mirror open on the headline "Stadium of Blight" for me to discover when I arrived on Tuesday morning. Due to Machynlleth's poor 4G reception, I discovered Sunderland had been relegated by overhearing a Welsh child's conversation at around 8:30pm on Saturday night. It seemed fitting. After about five years of implausible acts of escapology, the club's demise was something of an anticlimax, meekly slipping out of the top flight having not won a match since the infamous 4-0 win at Crystal Palace on 4th February. That day now feels like some kind of fever dream and any lingering chance of survival ended about two months ago.

At the start of the season, the club were perhaps unfortunate to lose Sam Allardyce to England but David Moyes' tenure has been a disaster. He is a man whose attitude to his job makes me look like a motivational speaker by comparison. No-one, anywhere in football, thinks telling the media two games into a season that your club will be in a relegation battle is a good idea and his negativity has rubbed off on everyone for the worst. Combine this with negative tactics and poor decisions in the transfer market and you've a recipe for disaster. If Jermain Defoe didn't score, Sunderland didn't score. And the situation only worsened in the new year, one freak afternoon in Norwood aside.

Defoe will go. As will the only other bright spark for the Black Cats this season, young Jordan Pickford. There'll be a mass clearout, salaries and budgets slashed. The future of the club from a financial perspective looks uncertain. It's currently being discussed at board level whether Moyes will stay. Either he will leave before the start of next season or 12 games in when the team are struggling in the bottom half of the Championship. I've seen enough this season to suggest that football management has left him behind which is a damning indictment of the man who was set to be the heir to Sir Alex Ferguson's throne at Manchester United.

I'll look on the bright side. Supporting two teams is a lot easier when they're in different divisions. But Sunderland's ten year spell in the top flight is over and they may well be gone for some time.

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