Poyet To Rid Sunderland Of 'Weak' Players

Gus Poyet openly vented about the state of the team and performance which was on display for the world to see against Hull City this weekend.

Sunderland lost 3-0 in the FA Cup quarter final and in all honesty were lucky to get nil. Speaking post-match, Poyet fumed;

The players who played today were not good enough and that is simple - in the 50-50s, in the diving, in dealing with the referee when he panicked for 10 minutes - in not recovering well and not creating one chance.

We've got some weak people in there and I can assure you those ones are not going to be on the pitch next week.

Some have picked up on the 'diving' comment, which I don't think is anything Poyet encourages at all, more a jibe at some of the antics employed by Hull to pull the wool over the eyes of the referee, but the rest are salient points.

Trying to figure out who has been identified as weak though could be something of a quandry.

Some players would make-way anyway. Santiago Vergini, Nacho Scocco and Andrea Dossena were all likely to be replaced by Wes Brown, Fabio Borini and Marcos Alonso anyway regardless of the result.

The evidence will likely be seeing who makes the bench this weekend in a do-or-die game against Crystal Palace.

The likes of Steven Fletcher, Seb Larsson and Emanuele Giaccherini may well be very worried though about their futures.