Another defeat puts Grayson’s job in peril
SUNDERLAND’S season has reached full-blown crisis proportions with the Black Cats staring at the unthinkable double-relegation scenario.
Next-to-bottom of the table, nine points and only one win from 14 games, and showing no signs of progress.
Players making the same basic mistakes week after week, supporters losing the last vestiges of faith, and a manager in Simon Grayson teetering on the brink.
What an unholy mess this football club is in.
Fulham’s 94th-minute equaliser against basement side Bolton Wanderers meant the Black Cats are still two points ahead of their bottom-of-the-table rivals.
If they lose to Bolton at the Stadium of Light tomorrow night, they will hit rock bottom.
The presence on Saturday of Roy Keane at the Stadium of Light, now Republic of Ireland assistant manager but the man who led Sunderland back to the Premier League 11 years ago, only served as a cruel reminder of better days.
In the wake of this latest defeat, Grayson pointed the finger of blame firmly at his players.
It is a view I have some sympathy with – it is, after all, the players who ultimately win and lose games.
And Grayson’s record over a 12-year period at his four previous clubs shows that he is not a poor manager. But the reality is that the manager always carries the can in these situations. Ask Steve Bruce. Or Martin O’Neill. Or Dick Advocaat. Or David Moyes. The back-toback home games against Bristol and then Bolton tomorrow were regarded as pivotal for Grayson. That is still the case. Defeat against Bolton will almost certainly be the last act. A draw, in all probability, likewise.
A win will buy him a little time, but only if it is a turning point and not merely a blip.
So if Sunderland do beat Bolton and finally end that interminable 10-month wait for a home win, judgement is likely to be postponed until after the trip to Middlesbrough on Sunday.
And unless there are clear and continuing signs of improvement at the Riverside, the international break that follows will loom large for the manager.
But all that will be irrelevant if Sunderland fail to win against Bolton.
Whether a managerial change would improve matters is open to question.
There are no guarantees that rolling the dice would produce a double-six – in fact, the odds are stacked against it with Grayson the eighth man to occupy the manager’s office in just six years on Wearside.
However, such is Sunderland’s plight, owner Ellis Short and chief executive Martin Bain may decide they are already at the desperate gamble stage.