DOOMED FROM THE START
Moyes spoke about relegation from the moment he took over.. the drop and his departure were inevitable
DAVID MOYES started the season with a downbeat prediction that he got spot on.
After his Sunderland side lost 2-1 at home to rivals Middlesbrough in only their second game, the Scot said they would be in a relegation struggle. Again. It was a strange admission so early, and with 36 games to go. He did not get much more upbeat, with good reason, for the next nine months of drudgery and defeat. Moyes insists he was just being honest, but sometimes a bit of managerial bluster and big talk is required to squeeze the best out of a club. Gone was the boss who ruled Everton for 11 years with intensity, belligerence and guile. Scared by failure at Manchester United and Real Sociedad, the new Moyes almost seemed defeatist and resigned to the fate he engineered yesterday morning. Privately, he did not rate most of his squad. Or the atmosphere within it. Or the lack of leaders and a British core. Once again he was being brutally honest. But it was almost like he was trying not to get the blame for the likely outcome of relegation. Moyes inherited a mess, and leaves an even bigger mess. He was dealt a poor hand when he took over from Sam Allardyce last summer. But he played it badly. Moyes thought he would get around £50million to spend last summer, but ended up with £28m, the worst buy being £8m Papy Djilobodji (above). He still had 11 of the 18 players who beat Everton at the end of last season to survive under Allardyce. The squad was not decimated by sales. But it was limited and overly reliant on Jermain Defoe – whose goals dried up – and was overdue a fall. Sunderland are looking for their eighth manager in six years, but it does not look an alluring post. The latest figures show they are £137m in debt, with half owed to banks costing £7m interest. The wage bill is £83m, but will be cut by 60 per cent by ‘relegation clauses’. Moyes is not the first and will not be the last boss on Wearside to find years of mismanagement hard to turn around. He made mistakes. The player bonding trip, or jollyup, to New York in February, while club staff were getting redundancy notices, looked misjudged. But he was also infuriated by what he inherited. Defoe got a year’s contract extension last summer before he arrived – but the clause allowing him to go on a free if relegated was not removed. One £5m-plus error, among many. Black Cats fans had long made up their mind on Moyes’ dour outlook and chanted for him to go. He won no friends when he told a BBC reporter she could get a “slap” for asking a difficult question. The pity is that in private Moyes was warm and welcoming as he tried to build bridges. But results, and the seeming inevitability of defeat, did not give him a chance. Moyes was ground down by Sunderland, who wanted him for the long haul after so many years of managerial churn and shorttermism. Now they need a whirlwind, a determined character to put all the problems aside, and restore belief, no matter how tough the financial outlook.