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When you've been gifted an uncharacteristic 2-0 lead in a home fixture against a team that just haven't mustered any sort of meaningful competition, the very least that you expect is that the players and manager have the ability to manage the game correctly and see it out professionally in order to ensure that we do not trip up and miss out on taking three points.
Unfortunately for Sunderland and David Moyes, they just weren't mentally able to cope with being ahead and we leaked three very basic goals against Crystal Palace, something which the manager wasn't holding back on criticising in his regular post-match brief to SAFC.com.
Moyes said:
I'm really disappointed to concede three goals from two up.
We never gave ourselves a chance - after getting two in front we conceded within 30 seconds.
We need to do much better.
We didn't do the basics. We had a chance to clear for the first goal and didn't, then we had a chance to defend the back post for the second. There were too many mistakes.
If we had [done the basics] we would have won the game.
At 2-1 within 30 seconds you're back to an even game. We then had a couple of chances to score a third goal but didn't quite get it.
We're just not being reliable enough defensively and because of that we're finding it tough.
Is anyone else tired of reading what David Moyes has to say in the wake of a defeat? More empty words and nothingness.
He seems pretty insistent on blaming the players for their lack of basic ability in order to see the game out and, whilst that was a big part of why we lost on Saturday, he really needs to look at himself too and the decisions he made which played a part in us throwing away a two goal lead like we did.
When we went two ahead, where was the basic game-management from Moyes? What was the plan to ensure that we didn't concede and came away with three points?
Once Jermain Defoe scored our second goal we sat deeper, invited Palace on to us and they scored almost instantly after the re-start. It doesn't get much more Sunderland than that. Still though, we had the lead. And the way in which we just allowed Palace to attack us should have been the warning that led to Moyes initiating a plan B.
We needed to tighten up down the flanks and maybe take off the players that weren't holding on to the ball enough - the likes of Jan Kirchhoff and Adnan Januzaj, for instance, failed to impress yet again this weekend and were clearly not having an impact upon the game. Moyes' inability to recognise when one of his players is struggling is beginning to baffle me.
Yet again though our manager left it late to make changes - a complete contrast to what Alan Pardew did. The Palace manager may well have his detractors - me being one of them - but his substitutions made a difference. Just a minute after being brought on for Martin Kelly, Zeki Fryers beat Javier Manquillo and put a delicious cross into the Sunderland box which we of course failed to deal with. Pardew made a change and it was effective - it would be nice if David Moyes would identify the weaknesses of our opposition and do the same from time to time.
After Palace drew level Moyes' first instinct was to panic, and with it looking increasingly likely that we weren't going to win the game he brought on Victor Anichebe and Paddy McNair with five minutes of normal time remaining, opting to take off our primary leader and organiser Lee Cattermole instead of Jan Kirchhoff. It was in fact Kirchhoff who failed to pick up Christian Benteke for the final goal, and you have to wonder just how much that decision will play on the mind of David Moyes over the coming days.
It feels absolutely pathetic and disheartening to say it but it feels like David Moyes is already running on borrowed time, especially in the eyes of the supporters. He's done nothing thus far to convince any of us that he's capable of diverting our club away from a relegation battle and whilst I admit that a promising win next weekend could certainly go some way to changing all of that, I don't have any confidence whatsoever in our manager or players being capable of battling to a win.
It's abhorrent that we are in such a dire state just six games in to the campaign and it's no surprise that the attendance at the weekend dipped - people are already growing tired of going to the Stadium of Light to watch the players fail to fight for the shirt that they wear, and that's not good. Ellis Short may well be David Moyes' biggest fan but he cannot ignore that Sunderland are clearly on a downwards slide, something that will only worsen should an in-form West Brom side turn up next week and be the latest team to take three points from us on our home turf.
