Sunderland fan blog: Fans let down again after another embarrassing defeat

Pre-match on Saturday, there felt a feeling like a new dawn was rising on Wearside: the departure of Lee Johnson signalling a time for a new head coach to take the reins and implement their own stamp onto the football club.

And by all means, yes, there was a significant rise in the attendance due to the return of the veteran, Jermain Defoe, but on the pitch, the team did no favours into maintaining this support.

The only positives to take from this one? Probably, the fans. But, even then, yet again, they were let down in typical Sunderland fashion.

And, there’s no covering up this one, as for another successive week, the Black Cats simply didn’t learn their lessons, and were beaten by bottom-of-the-table Doncaster.

Arguably, the hosts’ first half display was the worst of the campaign so far; maybe not to the extent of their second half performance at the UniBol last week, but the disastrous nature of this one was on full show for all 38,295 supporters.

And, yet again, the inquest continues, as to where Sunderland go from here and how they now pick up, what is proving to be, their tatters of automatic promotion hopes.

Because that’s what they are proving to be. Their grip on the top two is slowly deteriorating, and if anything, the need of a new head coach is key.

Pre-match Kristjaan Speakman spoke about how the process looks like it’s ticking slowly to a conclusion, yet this performance spoke levels about the need for a head coach that is going to set high standards of this group of players.

Too often this season, this side has been left lacking ideas, and too often has it led to a more pedestrian approach, and that’s what’s worrying for supporters.

Saturday highlighted this issue perfectly: upon a consistent basis, Sunderland lacked any movement in the forward areas, and as a result, they were left, agonisingly, moving the ball from side-to-side, one pass forward, and two backwards.

Yet, when they pushed forwards, they fell short of any creativity that was needed to unlock the door of a Doncaster side that had five put past them by Rotherham only four days previous.

In Ross Stewart, they have a striker who can hold the ball up well, utilise his physical presence well and put the ball in the back of the net when the chance comes, but majority of the times he won the ball at the weekend, any of his attacking colleagues were often too deep.

The addition of Jermain Defoe will no doubt look to exploit this threat in the upcoming weeks, but there’s no doubt Sunderland fans are left scratching their heads about what, and where next.

This is going to be a massive next couple of days for the Black Cats, as their head coach hunt looks to reach its conclusion and they travel to Cheltenham on Tuesday night, but as the end of the season looks to be getting closer, Sunderland’s automatic promotion aspirations are on a knife edge.

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