Saturday saw Bolton Wanderers join the growing list of not particularly good teams to have come to the Stadium of Light in recent weeks and left with all three points – another squad of players getting back on the team bus hardly able to believe their luck.

Like Portsmouth, Blackburn and West Ham before them, Bolton came, they saw, they failed to impress but still left with a comfortable win under their belts.

And they left behind them a club heading rapidly towards crisis.

For anyone who does not believe six defeats in seven does not constitute a crisis at this level – particularly with the amount of troublesome tales surrounding the club off the pitch – is living in a dreamworld.

We must all hope it is an awful blip, but the reality is that Saturday's shambolic display had the word "relegation" written all over it.

Even us super-optimists would be unable to defend the club against that claim.

In terms of the breadth of the debacle, the match would have reminded Sunderland supporters of the chaotic 4-1 home defeat to Portsmouth during the Black Cats' 15-point relegation season or the laughably tragic 3-1 home defeat to Charlton – courtesy of three own goals – in the 19-point demotion.

On another day, had striker Johan Elmander, in particular, shown a deadlier touch, Sunderland could have been facing their biggest ever defeat at the Stadium of Light.

Roy Keane went into the game keeping faith with the midfield and strike-force who were on the losing side against West Ham the previous week, the manager identifying defence as the weakest link and making changes at the back.

Craig Gordon returned in goal, despite the manager suggesting 24 hours earlier that the game would come too soon for him, out-of-favour Pascal Chimbonda was restored to right-back and centre-half Anton Ferdinand was dropped – changes which saw Danny Collins moved into central defence and Phil Bardsley swapping flanks to fill in at left-back.

The manager was right with his appreciation of where the key problem lies – 18 games this season have yielded only two clean sheets – but he turned out to be wrong in his proposed remedy.

The reshuffled back-four produced Sunderland's worst defensive display of the season. By a country mile.

Bolton went into the game full of confidence after three wins in their last four games, their last match a 3-1 victory at Middlesbrough, and it was no surprise they named an unchanged side.

But, after a confident start by the visitors, they were rocked back on their heels by a classily-taken 11th minute Sunderland opener.

The goal was Sunderland at their best – quick-thinking by Kieran Richardson and Steed Malbranque on the right of the Bolton box saw slick passes interchanged before the French midfielder stabbed the ball forward to Djibril Cisse on the right of goal and he instantly drove a low shot across Jussi Jaaskelainen and in off the keeper's right-hand post.

Less than 10 minutes later, though, and Sunderland were trailing, as Keane's players demonstrated why they are such a frustrating bunch of footballers to manage at the moment.

They are capable of top-class football, as they showed for Cisse's sixth goal of the season, but they're also equally capable of producing moments of Sunday football quality.

In the 17th minute, Sunderland failed to stop Gretar Steinsson putting a cross in from a throw-in and Matthew Taylor – not known for his great height – leapt above a dawdling Chimbonda 12 yards out to send a looping header over keeper Gordon, who will feel he might have done better than to get a glove to the ball, only to tip it into the roof of his net.

Worse was to follow, with Sunderland's continuing vulnerability to set-pieces exposed in the 21st minute.

Former Newcastle centre-half Andy O'Brien chipped a free-kick forward from just inside the Sunderland half and although Collins met it in the box, his header dropped to the feet of Gary Cahill 15 yards out and he controlled and fired a shot past Gordon in the blink of an eye.

Perhaps the pivotal moment came minutes later when Sunderland attacked and Kenwyne Jones headed a brilliant Bardsley cross from the left on to the cross-bar – Cisse netting the rebound but the linesman harshly – and incorrectly in this writer's judgment – ruled the goal out for what was viewed as a foul on Jlloyd Samuel by Jones, when he jumped to head the ball.

That would have made it 2-2 and the momentum might have swung back in the hosts' favour.

But Sunderland are getting none of the breaks at the moment and are not producing enough form across 90 minutes to ensure they win games without some element of good fortune going their way.

They could thank the football gods that hit-or-miss striker Johan Elmander did not take advantage of a wonderful chance on the half-hour – Bolton's Trojan worker Kevin Davies perfectly cushioned Gordon's goal-kick back up towards the Swedish striker and Elmander broke free of the defence and rounded Gordon, only to lift his shot inches over a gaping goal.

That danger having passed, Sunderland carved out another chance to equalise when Cisse and Jones combined well, but Jones' tee-up of Malbranque was screwed wickedly wide by the midfielder and the Wearsiders paid the price of their profligacy when they dropped further behind in the 38th minute.

Once again, Sunderland's problems were of their own making – Collins kicking fresh air as a routine long-ball forward dropped in front of him – and Elmander nipped in to make no mistake this time, zeroing in on Gordon's goal and shooting through the keeper from the right of the six-yard box, an effort that Gordon might again have felt he should have done better with.

Having left the pitch at half-time to boos all round the ground, Sunderland needed to produce a storming start to the second half if they were to turn the game their way and Keane brought on Grant Leadbitter for the out-of-sorts Richardson, no doubt hoping to add grit and tenacity to his side.

But, instead of sparking a fightback, Sunderland found themselves under more threat, Gordon having to claw away an accurately-flighted shot from former Sunderland star Gavin McCann in the 50th minute – the midfielder given far too much time to size up his shot and the keeper acrobatically clawing the ball away from his top right-hand corner.

There was a jitteriness about Sunderland's play as they struggled to make inroads – passes going fractionally awry, runs not being made, first touches not being quite right, attempted crosses and through-balls not finding their man.

It was a lack of confidence thing. And just before the hour, Sunderland paid the price for it.

Dean Whitehead received a driven pass, difficult to control, midway inside his own half and his first touch was not a good one.

The ball fell to rival skipper Kevin Nolan and he did brilliantly to carry the ball to the edge of the Sunderland area under pressure before sliding it across to Elmander, on the left of goal, who drove a rising shot high over Gordon and into the roof of the net for Bolton's fourth.

What followed must have been one of the longest half hours of the Sunderland players careers – just as at Chelsea when they shipped in five goals four weeks earlier.

They knew the game was up, but the game itself still had a long way to go.

Keane realised that, once again this season, the influence of Malbranque and Andy Reid was fading rapidly and he replaced them just after the hour, with Teemu Tainio and Liam Miller.

The subs are the sort of never-say-die players any side needs when their backs are against the wall, but it was hard to argue with fans who simply saw their side's two most creative players sacrificed for two defensive midfielders.

Furthermore, it meant that Sunderland now had four central midfielders playing across the middle, a change which largely meant Jones could forget the idea of feasting on quality crosses into the box.

By now, hacks were reaching for their stats files to check out Sunderland's biggest defeat at the Stadium of Light and they might have needed their reference books had Elmander not made a hash of another open goal as well as being denied by a brilliant Gordon block.

But even the scoreline was not as depressing as the sight of skipper Whitehead's every touch being booed by a section of the crowd after his mistake led to the fourth goal, or the spectacle of Keane getting stick from home fans in both halves in what was his 100th game in charge.

It remains a marvel that, despite all the facilities at their disposal, the ground's security chiefs can somehow manage to be blissfully unaware that the manager needs immediate protection from abusive fans
but respond with military efficiency to snuff out a good-natured Bolton fans' conga in a matter of seconds.

Not that there were too many supporters to dish out abuse by the final whistle – the ground emptying at an eye-catching rate of knots after Cisse squirted a half-chance wide with 15 minutes remaining.

Bolton's visit ends a sequence of games against the teams around them in the table that Sunderland would have hoped to profit from in the wake of their victory over Newcastle.

Instead, the verdict has to be, not so much "Must Do Better" as "'Could Hardly Have Done Worse".

Keane is right when he says the fault for the current slump lies with him and his coaching staff. For, while he cannot legislate for individual errors, he is responsible for the quality of team performances.

For all the fine quality of their players on an individual basis, Sunderland simply do not possess a team at the minute.

And while the manager has bought quality, you have to question whether he has bought commitment – the sort of character(s) that last season's lesser quality team demonstrated in keeping the side up.

For all his fine words about Sunderland earlier in the season, El-Hadji Diouf's love-in with Bolton fans at the final whistle was nothing short of a disgrace and not only should he be disciplined by the club this week, he should apologise to the Sunderland fans who pay his wages.

It may already be however that he has been told he is going back to Bolton, so minimal has his impact been in recent months.

Similarly too, Pascal Chimbonda's quotes before the game, in which he said he would welcome a move to French side Lyon, hardly smacked of a Kevin Ball-esque commitment to Sunderland's cause.

What Sunderland need now is leaders. Players who their team-mates can look to take their lead from.

Jones supplied it last season up front, just as Cisse has this season, but whether the two can do it as a partnership remains to be seen.

If that pairing is to succeed, it will need a well-oiled midfield playing behind it, a midfield capable of quality crosses from the flanks, not to mention a potent goal threat running all the way through it and, at the moment, those are qualities it does not consistently possess.

The platform needed to turn the season around, though, has to lie in defence, where an inability to keep clean sheets is undermining everything else.

Sunderland have some very good defenders, but what they lack is the sort of top-quality defensive leadership that on-loan Jonny Evans has offered in the second half of the preceding two seasons. Nyron Nosworthy and Gordon have never looked so good as when they have had Evans alongside or in front of them.

And when Keane said last week that his only scope in the January transfer window might be to bring in a loan player, Sunderland fans could have been forgiven for getting down on their knees and praying that the New Year marks the third coming of the golden boy.

Unfortunately, the nearest struggling Sunderland are likely to get to Evans in the immediate future is if he lines up for Sir Alex Ferguson's men against them at Old Trafford this Saturday – a game which is almost certain to deepen the woes currently sweeping over Wearside