Tony Gillan: Of course ex-Sunderland boss David Moyes can manage any club - very badly!

Speaking, perhaps after a couple of early eggnogs, a few days before masterminding yet another home defeat, this time to bottom three opponents who had won one of their previous 13 matches, he was in full boasting mode.

He said of his managerial prowess: “I think I’m capable of doing the job at any club in the world.”

This brought forth a cascade of hooted online derision, although there were really only two responses. ie.

l You weren’t “capable” at your last three jobs Dave.

l You ARE capable of managing any club Dave. Just not very well.

But what he said last week was not merely the burbling of a deluded soul.

As with much of what he said while at Sunderland – all those excuses that he got in early – it’s to do with self-preservation.

He knows that such statements will cause comment; mainly about the breath-takingly awful job he did at the Stadium of Light.

He also knows he will have very public defenders claiming that Sunderland were “unsaveable” in 2016-17. Harry Redknapp for example has already said so, which pretty much proves straightaway that it isn’t true.

Like Steve Bruce’s “Sunderland sacked me because I’m a Geordie” gibberish, “no manager could have kept Sunderland up last season” is set to become an urban myth – despite needing about three seconds to disprove.

Sam Allardyce would have kept them up. Whoever his successor was, unfortunately it turned out to be Moyes, would take over a club with a great goalkeeper and striker, that had lost one game in 11 (the one defeat was to the champions) and be given around £35m to invest/squander.

Sunderland were as “unsaveable” as Jeff Whitley’s penalty. But it benefits Moyes’ CV when his friends say otherwise.

He didn’t come out with last week’s merely to attract ridicule (he can’t possibly believe it himself). It was to attract “expert” opinion in his favour.

David Moyes isn’t daft. He is, however, not a very good football manager these days.

l Sunderland’s atrocious home form recommenced against Birmingham City on Saturday; as did the relentless, tortuous playing of Green Onions after the final whistle that we mentioned last week.

How much longer? I am now begging. Please, please, please, please, please etc. NO MORE GREEN ONIONS!!