Bumbling Black Cats must get claws out

A WEEK ago today I woke up to three text messages and I immediately assumed all three were April Fool’s jokes.

The first involved a pal falling asleep on a wine glass and slicing his throat open leading to five hours of surgery, the second informed me Alan Shearer was Newcastle United’s new manager and the third that Djibril Cisse had been arrested outside a lap-dancing bar on Tyneside overnight.

The latter sums up most of what’s wrong at Sunderland at the moment. Regardless of whether Flashy Pants was drinking, lap dancing or even just walking past, it’s bad enough that he ventures to Newcastle, let alone at 3am. It smacks of being unprofessional.

Fortunately, he’s not alone in the gutless stakes. On Saturday at Upton Park he was joined by 12 others. When we went down with 15 points in 2006, there was an almost confusing outcry when Mick McCarthy was sacked as we limped to a sorry end. He’d been given limited funds, but the evidence was clear that his players were trying as hard as possible, they just weren’t good enough to stay up.

Fast forward three years and there’s little doubt that Kenwyne Jones and Steed Malbranque are better Premiership assets than Jonathan Stead and Gary Breen. We now have the quality in our squad, but I’m starting to worry whether we’ve got enough bottle. Nobody seems willing to grab games by the scruff of the neck.

Ricky Sbragia blamed his skipper after West Ham, describing our lack of leadership on the pitch as “a problem.” Dean Whitehead’s already blamed the fans. My view is that both players and manager have to take a large portion of blame and leave the supporters out of it. We had the perfect chance to have a go at the Hammers but Ricky went for caution (4-5-1) rather than cavalier. And we’re now teetering on the brink.

With Roy Keane it took just a few quips about how great the club is, an occasional whole-hearted display and a big-name signing to get the city jumping. Ricky constantly plays one man up front, hypes up every single team we play against and loses lots of games. Put simply, he’s gone from being a popular coach to one lacking inspiration.

Compare that to a few miles up the road and the comparisons between Shearer and Sbragia are there to be made. Sunderland and Newcastle have both appointed gaffers with no managerial experience to try and beat the drop. Whilst our supporters bicker and we play lone strikers against fellow strugglers, St James’ is jumping and the man with a Weetabix on his forehead played two up front against Chelsea to try and get a win.

I did laugh at the usual morons who had ‘taken time off work’ (yeah, right) to stand outside St James’ Park to celebrate their latest messiah’s arrival. One woman who, being diplomatic, I’ll describe as obese, declared that she’d been so excited at the news she couldn’t eat. I can only guess that her husband wishes she began her food boycott a decade ago before she tipped 20 stone on the bathroom scales.

Shearer’s appointment will hopefully be good news for us though. Newcastle have suffered a comprehensive loss now and the magic has gone. They face the same sort of tough-looking fixtures that we do. Aside from our games against Hull and West Brom, I can’t see many more easy chances to win points. Next up is the visit of Manchester United, where we’ll struggle using a positive approach, let alone cowering in our shells like normal.

I might share something in common with Shearer in that I don’t own the correct coaching badges to manage a Premiership club. I can offer this piece of advice to Ricky free of charge, though; we’ve a much better chance of a result by putting both of our strikers on the pitch at the same time. Can I have my Pro-Licence now please?

* Martyn McFadden www.a-love-supreme.com