Arnautovic adds to Black Cats’ misery
DAVID MOYES must have looked at the fixture list and red-circled this one for three of the points Sunderland will need to stay up.
Home matches against mid-table opposition, who don’t travel well, are exactly the sort of games you have to win.
So when you find yourselves 3-0 down after 34 minutes it’s a disaster.
Marko Arnautovic smashed in the first two and Peter Crouch added the third, so when Jermain Defoe scored his 12th of the season the game was already lost.
Stoke haven’t won on Wearside since 1994, but they can never have come across a poorer Sunderland XI in that time.
Moyes has excuses and the Stadium of Light fans point the finger of blame elsewhere. Ellis Short and his board are their targets.
There are 11 first-teamers unavailable to the Scot. Lamine Kone, Didier Ndong and Wahbi Khazri are all away at the Africa Cup of Nations, and eight others are injured.
Moyes knows he has no money to spend and has accepted that he may simply have to write-off the prospects of signing reinforcements in the transfer window.
“I think you’ve got to add to the squad because the numbers are down,” he said.
“We’re pretty short, but everyone who follows us knows what the situation is. Today was down to three poor individual mistakes, and that never allowed us to get going. When you go 3-0 down you need a big set of you-know-whats to keep trying to play and do things right.