Sunderland boss David Moyes calls for united front after poor start to the season

The 53-year-old Scot is still awaiting his first Premier League win as Black Cats boss nine games into his reign and finds himself rooted to the foot of the table, as have so many of his predecessors in recent years.

However, he believes the departures of Roy Keane, Ricky Sbragia, Steve Bruce, Martin O'Neill, Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat and Sam Allardyce inside the last eight years illustrates that there is something more fundamental than simply the performance of the man in the hot-seat in Sunderland's failings.

Asked how difficult he is finding the current situation, Moyes said: "Yes, it is, it's never easy.

"But I've got to say, it's part of the job and I don't think when I came here I probably expected it to be an awful lot better.

"I hoped it would be better, but I think deep down, I also expected it to be that way.

"But you know, it's a collective job now, it's not just the manager because everybody has had the focus on the manager here before.

"It has to be the staff, it has to be the playing staff, it has to be everybody involved in the club because yes, you can change the one guy there, but it's proved in the past that's not the answer."