Sunderland boss David Moyes not looking at the wider relegation picture

David Moyes is not looking too far and wide in the battle for survival '“ insisting he is concentrating only on Sunderland.
David Moyes watches on against SwanseaDavid Moyes watches on against Swansea
David Moyes watches on against Swansea

The Black Cats slumped back to the bottom of the Premier League on Saturday after going down 3-0 in the basement battle at Swansea.

After an encouraging opening 45 minutes, they lost their way after the break, conceding goals to Fernando Llorente (2) and a soft penalty to Gylfi Sigurdsson.

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It meant Bob Bradley’s team leapfrogged them, not that defeat was a nail in the coffin, far from it, the bottom seven clubs are separated by a mere five points.

“I’ve not really looked, honestly,” said a frustrated. “I’m only interested in how we do and I know we’re obviously going to have to win games and I’ve got an idea of how many.

“But overall what other teams do, I can’t do anything about.

“I would have liked to have seen us out of it [by winning at Swansea].

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“Don’t get me wrong, if I had seen that we were out of it I’d have said ‘great’.

“But if we’re at the bottom, well, we’ve been there for most of it so it’s not something new at the moment.”

The state of play in the lower reaches of the division means they are still in contention and Moyes says there will be no hangover with two hard matches coming up in the space of four days against Chelsea and Watford.

“No, it won’t put us back,” said the manager. “We’ve got ourselves back in with a fighting chance again, you know [after three wins out of the previous four].

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“A few weeks ago we weren’t in it, so we’ll brush ourselves down and get on with what’s next.

“We’ve got a busy week.

“We’re still in there – look. We won three out of four games, that was great.

“We know our limitations, we know what we’ve got and we know it’s going to be a tough job to see it through.

“We’ve said that right from day one, we’ve not kidded anybody on.”

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For all the belief has grown in recent weeks, Moyes was frustrated by Saturday’s below-par display.

The Scot was upset with the penalty award against Jason Denayer for handball, five minutes into the second half, when the scoreline was goalless.

But he was equally unhappy they took a step backwards, performance-wise.

“The club have been here many times,” he admitted. “I said on Friday that we probably need to go on a good run maybe two or three times this season, winning a few games, drawing a couple.

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“This time we’ve won three out of four and that was great for us.

“We have to do that to make sure we keep ourselves in the Premier League.

“We weren’t good enough [at Swansea], we didn’t play well enough.

“But I thought the game changed on a very tight [penalty] decision.”