| Vultures begin circling at Stadium of Light By
Gareth Makim
 You
know your season isn’t going to plan when it’s two weeks into
the new year and your manager is telling the press that he’s the
best man to get the club back into the Premiership.
Unfortunately for Sunderland fans, that is the reality of the situation
on Wearside. With only one win and six points from 21 games, the Black
Cats are not only almost certain to be relegated, it will take a late
surge for them to avoid setting a new record for Premiership futility,
breaking their own mark of 19 set in 2003. No wonder Mick McCarthy is
already planning for next season.
Sunderland fans have been incredibly patient with the former Ireland boss,
a majority backing him in a pre-Christmas newspaper poll. But the tide
appears to be turning and McCarthy is growing increasingly weary delivering
his regular bouts of televised optimism. A scapegoat always has to be
found in such situations, and if it comes to it, sacking McCarthy won’t
be the hardest decision that chairman Bob Murray has had to make. Murray
began laying the groundwork for McCarthy’s exit at the weekend when
he said: “At a club that’s struggling as badly as this one
is, there’s going to be speculation as to the manager and the way
forward and I don’t want to add to that situation.”
Murray also claimed that McCarthy had been given as much help in the transfer
market as fellow promoted sides Wigan and West Brom, but the truth is
that with £40million of debt, Sunderland just couldn’t compete.
McCarthy will be disappointed in himself for squandering what money he
had on strikers Jon Stead and Andy Gray, who at a combined cost of £2.5million
have contributed just one league goal. How the Barnsley man must curse
the injury that robbed him of Stephen Elliott in October, just when the
Irish international was finding his Premiership feet. His other major
summer signing, goalkeeper Kelvin Davis, seemed to be smart business as
the then Ipswich stopper was regarded as the best in the Championship,
but he quickly developed into a liability at the top level.
At Wigan, money was made available to sign Senegal Henri Camara for £2.4million
and to pay hefty wages to free transfers such as Stephane Henchoz and
Arjan De Zeeuw. This month Latics boss Paul Jewell has again gone to the
well, forking out £2million on Austrian defender Paul Scharner.
Likewise Alan Pardew bought Yossi Benayoun and Paul Konchesky in the summer,
both international players, and has been linked with a £7million
bid for Norwich’s Dean Ashton. This is the same sum that Sunderland
once wasted on the gangly Norewgian Tore Andre Flo, money McCarthy can
now only dream of. The whole of Wearside must look with some jealousy
at Portsmouth and their new Russian sugar daddy.
The truth of the matter is that McCarthy is a victim of his own success.
He knitted together a patchwork of cast-offs and lower league discoveries
into surprise winners of the Championship, but the Premiership has only
been a land of false promise. Cast-offs don’t cut it against Chelsea,
Liverpool and Arsenal.
Sunderland’s only player of real Premiership quality, Julio Arca,
has made it a case of when, and not if, he will leave the strugglers,
and he will deserve credit if he stays until the end of the season. Many
of his teammates will secretly be hoping for the season to end so they
can return to the more comfortable and forgiving surroundings of the lower
tier. Whether or not the man who probably is the best-placed to get them
back up again is with them is getting more unlikely with each defeat.
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