Sunderland’s season started with an own goal.
The Black Cats were outclassed in their opening game, as they ought to have been by Manchester City, but it took Paddy McNair putting through his own net after 87 minutes to beat them.
A litany of off-field own goals – historical and recent – condemned them to the Championship.
There is a strong argument that any manager would have struggled to keep Sunderland’s squad in the Premier League, but its meagre make-up was largely the product of a decade of mismanagement. Even if relegation was inevitable, its feebleness was not. David Moyes ought to have done better with what he had, and few of his players performed at their best. Even Jermain Defoe, so crucial in the first half of the campaign, went missing once recalled by England – demoralised, perhaps, by ploughing a lone furrow in what by October looked a lost cause.
At times Swansea City, Hull City, Crystal Palace and, in the eyes of some, even champions Leicester City appeared doomed to relegation. Bournemouth seemed as though they might sleepwalk into the bottom three. All put up a fight, even if Hull’s was in vain. Bournemouth finished ninth. Sunderland only spent 21 days outside of the relegation zone.
Defeatism hung heavy in the air at the Stadium of Light from its first matchday. Others created the circumstances, but Moyes set the tone.
When he arrived in July, many of us thought he was a good choice to build on the work of Sam Allardyce, spirited away by England. We were wrong. Whether or not he proves a good manager next season or at different clubs he did not do well at Sunderland in 2016-17. Moyes brought negativity to an already desperate situation.
Sunderland's Jermain Defoe speaks with Sunderland manager David Moyes (Photo: PA)
When secret cameras filmed what he thought was a private conversation with a businessman but turned out to be a trap set by an undercover journalist, Allardyce showed he is a blusterer. Moyes is not. In other circumstances his honesty might have served him well but a club which had done ridiculous things in previous springs to avoid seemingly inevitable relegation needed to delude themselves it could happen again to have any chance it might. They got the opposite and that too was a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The season’s first home game had only just finished when Moyes was asked whether fans could expect another relegation battle.
“Well, they would probably be right because that’s where they’ve been every other year for the last four years, so why would it suddenly change?” he said. “I think it will be, I don’t think you can hide the facts, that will be the case, yes. People will be flat because they are hoping that something is going to dramatically change - it can’t dramatically change, it can’t.”
He was honest, he was right, but the season was eight days old, the transfer window open for another 10. His negativity sent a message to anyone mulling over a move to Wearside. No wonder Sunderland could not sign the centre-forward they needed in August, or that Robbie Brady preferred to go elsewhere in January.
The Black Cats were already handicapped by debts of £110.4m and financial fair play rules which meant ignoring the bottom line was not an option. Even once it was clear Allardyce would leave to manage England they were lagging behind in the market. If Allardyce is not doing deals, something is wrong.
Years of poor decisions, on transfers and in terms of management – hastily-sacked managers and bad directors of football – left Moyes little to work with. He still expected funds in January, wrongly. When Patrick van Aanholt joined Crystal Palace he was the first player in five-and-a-half years Sunderland had sold for more than they paid for him.
Allardyce did his job well but it was a short-term one. The Special Ks signed the previous January were not special at all under Moyes, Lamine Kone having his head turned in August, Jan Kirchhoff dropping to bits and Wahbi Khazri not to his new manager’s taste. Selling Kone would have been a surrender, keeping him did not work out well either. Throughout the season Moyes was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.
Parachuted in when the pre-season fixtures were underway, Moyes’ natural caution made quick signings difficult and caused more short-termism. He fell back on players he knew from Everton – in their prime then, past it now. Victor Anichebe, Steven Pienaar, Joleon Lescott and Darron Gibson’s injury records meant their contributions were only likely to be flitting. Anichebe was the pick, and made just 14 starts. Lee Cattermole kicked off eight, Sunderland’s make-do-and-mend approach to his fitness in previous relegation battles coming back to bite him.
At the start Moyes was willing to rely on youngsters and while that never stopped, his faith waned. Lynden Gooch barely featured after recovering from a November injury, George Honeyman’s involvement was too little too late.
Other incidents added to Sunderland’s hapless image. Van Aanholt’s withdrawal from the team to face Tottenham Hotspur during the warm-up would have been comical had it not been so serious, announcing a wide-ranging back-office redundancy plan a week after a team bonding trip to New York was crass, and Moyes’ threat to “slap” a reporter for asking a reasonable question disgraceful. By then he was in a hole he could not dig himself out of. His failure to applaud fans who called for his sacking at the end of the season’s final home game, and Sunderland’s compliance with John Terry’s cringeworthy Stamford Bridge send-off gave his critics more sticks to beat him with.
If van Aanholt’s heart was a concern, so were others in the dressing room. Capitulations at home to Everton, Arsenal, Stoke City and Southampton – on the back of a 4-0 win at Crystal Palace – suggested Fabio Borini was right when he spoke of a divided dressing room, and it was the same at Burnley and Swansea City. Sunderland’s passivity on the field and in the dugout as they conceded an injury-time corner to lose at home to Palace was another poor reflection.
Moyes blamed the spirit on the cumulative effect of years of fighting relegation. That was true of the season as a whole. Ten years of Premier League football had accumulated so many problems, and in 2015-16 they spectacularly came to roost.
- Chroniclelive