Shouldn't he be shouting at them to mark Benteke at that corner?
David Moyes struggles to identify what is going wrong at SunderlandManager calls for players to stand up and be counted as his team, with Jermain Defoe the only fit senior striker, face a familiar relegation battleDavid Moyes says he is at a loss to understand what is wrong at Sunderland, who are bottom of the Premier League with one point from six games. Louise TaylorMonday 26 September 2016 22.32 BSTDidier Ndong looked utterly bewildered. Sunderland’s French‑speaking Gabon midfielder was receiving instructions about throw-ins from Lee Cattermole and clearly could not comprehend a word the Teessider was saying.Eventually, Cattermole resorted to mime. Lifting his arms above his head, he pretended to hurl a ball into play and, finally, Ndong appeared to understand. Well, sort of.That “lost in translation” moment took place during the 3-2 home defeat by Crystal Palace on Saturday and seemed horribly emblematic of the series of chronic disconnects bedevilling David Moyes’s latest club. Bottom of the Premier League with one point from six games, Sunderland can do nothing right at present, with even their manager’s choice of grey matchday tracksuit branded “depressing” in certain quarters.After recent failures at Manchester United and Real Sociedad, Moyes could be forgiven for pining for the old security of Everton blue but the current mess is hardly of his making.David Moyes admits lack of summer recruitment could cost Sunderland dearRead moreAt first glance, it appears a mystery why a club who have spent the past nine years walking the supposedly gold-paved Premier League pavements, with average crowds well in excess of 40,000, seem locked in a series of apparently eternal relegation skirmishes, but Sunderland’s most recent accounts explain a lot.They have failed to post a profit since 2006, recording pre-tax losses totalling £170m over the past nine years. The latest one – registered for the financial year ending summer 2015 – was £25m. Perhaps significantly, the only top-tier clubs to produce worse figures were the subsequently relegated Aston Villa and QPR.Already Sunderland’s seventh manager in five years is making it crystal clear that the Championship beckons the Wearsiders, too. Moyes’s evident dissatisfaction with the owner Ellis Short’s transfer market parsimony this summer is thinly veiled.Yet if the inability to attract an established forward to support Jermain Defoe – the team’s sole fully fit senior striker and a player without whom they would surely have been long since sunk – looks beyond mere failure, the American financier has repeatedly bailed out the club.Indeed, he has poured £160m of his own money into Sunderland, capitalising £100m which dictates that latter sum can be recouped only if he achieves a certain sale price. Not that consortiums are queuing up to buy a concern where the last registered wages/turnover ratio was an extremely unhealthy 76% and Jordan Henderson, Simon Mignolet and Darren Bent are all too rare examples of players being sold for profit in recent years.Given the unprecedented bounty provided by the latest Premier League broadcast deal, Moyes would argue that July and August were the time to speculate to accumulate. Instead Short allowed Sam Allardyce’s successor to spend £21m net – £13.5m of it on Ndong, an unproven former Lorient midfielder who has become Sunderland’s record signing, and £8m on the so far thoroughly underwhelming former Chelsea defender Papy Djilobodji – an investment well short of that needed to remodel a substandard squad.After Margaret Byrne’s resignation following her mishandling of the Adam Johnson child abuse case last spring, Moyes is working alongside a new chief executive, Martin Bain, but Short’s disillusionment with signings made by Roberto De Fanti and, to a much lesser extent, Lee Congerton, means the director of football role has been scrapped.Congerton’s friends hinted that he struggled to cope with the club’s internecine internal politics. Perhaps tellingly, only last week one of his proteges, Danny Philpott, the popular assistant academy manager, was placed on gardening leave after apparently disputing aspects of the youth development strategy.A series of managers including Paolo Di Canio, Gus Poyet, Dick Advocaat and Allardyce – whose relations with Short had become frosty well before his departure for England – have, at various times, suggested “something’s wrong” at Sunderland and Moyes does not demur. “Yes, there is, there’s something,” he says. “But I’m no closer to identifying it.”Instead he is concentrating on filling the gaps left by Bain’s failure to re-recruit last season’s star midfield loanee Yann M’Vila from Rubin Kazan and Younès Kaboul’s defection to Watford. A key defender, Kaboul also exerted a powerful, positive influence over his fellow French speakers Lamine Koné and Wahbi Khazri. Outstanding performers last spring, that pair have underachieved under Moyes.The new manager tried to recalibrate a suspect locker-room chemistry by signing Joe Hart, Jack Wilshere and Ryan Mason in August but all three turned down moves. Interestingly, Moyes is adamant that Sunderland’s geographical position was not to blame.His existing players were described as “mentally fragile” and “in need of protection” by Allardyce. The Scot is adopting a different strategy. “I’m not necessarily an arm around the shoulder man,” Moyes says. “I want to see players be men, to stand up and take responsibility, be tough.”Tellingly, the last Sunderland manager with the courage to publicly say something similar was Di Canio. Whether his latest successor will prove the man to finally complete the much vaunted “revolution” promised by the Italian before Sunderland’s dressing room mutinied remains to be seen.https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/sep/26/david-moyes-struggles-sunderland-relegation-battle
Anyone else being strangely drawn to Dion Dublin's nipples?
Sunderland are only the second team in top-flight history to fail to win any of their opening eight league games in consecutive seasons (after Bury in 1905-06).Davey still going for records, I see.
This time next year . . . . . The Toon, top 5 of the PremierThe Mackems, bottom 5 of the Championship.Quote me on it
They really, really need what most teams would consider a home banker.
They really, really need what most teams would consider a home banker.Even then I wouldn't have any confidence in them winning, but they need one.
@ Veinticinco de Mayo The way you talk to other users on this forum is something you should be ashamed of as someone who is suppose to be representing the site.
Loving what is happening to these. Hopefully Hull and Burnley join them and fuck off out the league.
I work with a fair few dingles. They're sound enough, so I wouldn't mind seeing Burnley stay up. I like Sean Dyche as well.
?hows our pal borini doing there
Great workrate, not much quality, negligible goal threatGot a pretty bad injury a few weeks ago, isn't back til December iirc
Their worst start to a Premier League season and the worst Premier League start this century. Moyes is still breaking records.
Not just Borini , Sunderland have 7-8 players out injured so far this season and most of them muscle injuries as well.Weren't there reports of Moyes training methods causing injuries when he was at United (or Everton).About how there are more time doing laps around the training ground than work with the ball .Can't see him surviving much longer at this rate .
All the best to you and yours too.
Hey, Dickheads, how's your fabulous new Manager doing? .
The chants for Kenny Dalglish that were heard again on Wednesday do not necessarily mean that the fans see him as the saviour. This is not Newcastle, longing for the return of Kevin Keegan. Simply, Dalglish represents everything Hodgson is not and, in fairness, everything Hodgson could or would not hope to be.
Are we playing them sometime soon? Think it might be best to play them before they sack Moyes rather than after given the state they're in.