Black Cats’ Tees slide
third straight win and moved them up to fifth. Sunderland’s deeply unpopular owner Ellis Short, who admitted the club are in “a bit of a crisis” and claimed their natural position is seventh in the Premier League, is now searching for his ninth manager in six years. Make sense of that. Ally McCoist, who worked with Sunderland chief executive Martin Bain during their time together at Rangers, is in the frame.
Peter Reid, Kevin Phillips, Aitor Karanka and club captain John O’Shea have also been touted as potential candidates.
Stockdale, a former Boro defender, said: “We’ve got an international break now and the club will, I’m sure, be having discussions. It buys the club time to assess what they’d like to do. Whatever they decide, Billy and I will back it. After the game the feeling in the dressing room was very flat.You look at the group of players we’ve got and I’m convinced they will pull their way out of this.”
Sunderland could have led when Boro keeper Darren Randolph spilled Didier Ndong’s lshot before redeeming himself by denying Lewis Grabban from the rebound.
Then Garry Monk’s side sealed victory. Stewart Downing began a neat passing sequence by finding Martin Braithwaite down the right and his low delivery was clinically finished at the near post by England Under-19 player Tavernier.
The visitors’ woes increased when defender Billy Jones was forced off after being injured in a collision with team-mate Darron Gibson.
Sunderland pressed late on but, typically, lacked the quality to make it pay. Stockdale said: “I’m not going to sit here and say we were unlucky losers because we could have said that too many times this year. It’s up to us to change that and be lucky winners occasionally.”
For Middlesbrough, the biggest spenders in the Championship, things really are looking up after a slow start to Monk’s tenure.
Monk said: “We had a difficult period just before these last three games and took some criticism. But the players have showed everything this week and we have warranted those nine points.”
MIDDLESBROUGH (4-4-2): Booked: (4-1-4-1): Goal: