McCartney reveals McCarthy blast

Sunderland captain George McCartney has revealed manager Mick McCarthy issued a tongue-lashing to his players after an embarrassing defeat at Crewe.

The game was lost within two second-half minutes when first Dean Ashton and then Steve Jones beat Mart Poom, and their misery was compounded when Jones added his second eight minutes later to seal a 3-0 win.

It was only the Black Cats’ second league defeat in 12 outings and leaves them fifth in the table, three points off automatic promotion with just five goals from their last nine games.

“It’s not happening for us at the minute,” McCartney told the club’s official website, www.safc.com. “We’ve just got to keep on putting in good performances and it has to come to an end. We can change it.

“It’s an understatement to say the manager was annoyed after. He knows what we should have got out of the game and so do the players, but it wasn’t to be.

“It was a devastating two-minute spell that was our downfall. We were playing really well up until then.

“We’ve failed to score in six out of the last eight games and the whole team’s got to keep plugging away. If the strikers aren’t scoring it’s up to the defenders to keep a clean sheet and we didn’t do that.”