CRUSHING BLOW FOR COLEMAN’S ESCAPE BID
FOR three days over Easter weekend they believed that the great escape was on. Friday night’s shock 4-1 win at Derby was the source of Sunderland hope.
But not now, not after this demoralising defeat leaves them five points from safety with six to play. The escape is on all right, they’ll be exiting the Championship in the coming weeks, becoming only the fifth team to suffer back-to-back relegations from the top flight to the third tier.
A sodden Chris Coleman celebrated in the rain at Derby but he looked like he was drowning beneath a sea of weariness when he came to reflect here, even if he did try to apply a positive spin.
‘ Nothing is done until it is mathematically impossible,’ he declared, although the Welshman was lacking his usual zest. ‘We can go to Leeds on Saturday and win. One big result can change the landscape, we can’t give up, we have to keep pushing.’
Coleman took his players to the Caterpillar manufacturing plant last week, but this club have been digging holes for years and League One football will be the culmination of mismanagement at every level, a culture of incompetence the making of absent owner Ellis Short.
Perhaps the manager should have used that afternoon to work on defending crosses. It took Wednesday an hour to find Sunderland are incapable of doing so and, three deliveries later, they had scored three times.
‘When you are fragile and have been hit over the head for so long there is that vulnerability,’ added Coleman, who must have felt like banging heads together himself such was the ease with which the visitors got their goals.
Barry Bannan’s delivery just before the hour was not particularly venomous but it still stung Sunderland and Atdhe Nuhiu rose unopposed to nod down for Lucas Joao to volley home.
The hosts were level within 90 seconds when George Honeyman headed in from a Lynden Gooch centre. But Wednesday knew that cross equalled goal and so it proved when captain Tom Lees was afforded the freedom of the six-yard area to volley in from Joey Pelupessy’s set-piece.
Five minutes later, same again, Adam Reach centring from the left with Nuhiu turning in.
A Sunderland penalty appeal had split the goals, Gooch going down under the challenge of Bannan. Coleman fumed: ‘There was a defining moment when we should have had a pen and they go down to 10 men (Bannan was on a yellow). Everyone in the stadium thought penalty.’
Replays, however, suggested that the American winger had fallen a little too easily.
And that is what Sunderland have been doing all season, tumbling towards League One with little resistance.