Sunderland’s relegation last season came on the back of shocking Premier League campaign where the Black Cats finished rock bottom and with just 24 points.
Six wins was all they mustered last season, split equally between fixtures at home and away. Sunderland fans seemed resigned to the drop quite early in the season, a drop that became more inevitable as the Premier League season moved onward.
Now, almost a third of the way into their 2017/18 Sky Bet Championship campaign, the Wearsiders find themselves in another footballing abyss, another relegation battle. Saturday’s 2-1 loss against play-off challenging side Bristol City added another layer of worry to already worried Black Cats supporters.
Then 14 games in to the season, one where they’d have hoped to emulate near-neighbours and rivals Newcastle United who bounced back to the Premier League at the first attempt, Sunderland found themselves in a pitiful 23rd place in the table.
Below them lay only strugglers Bolton Wanderers and the nearest safety spot lies in the hands of 21st-placed Birmingham City who were then two points better off than the nine points that Sunderland had in the kitty.
Another game and another set of dropped points, in a 3-3 draw against bottom side Bolton on Tuesday evening, gave the Wearsiders a total of ten points from 15 games gives – an average of 0.67 points per game. If that form continues, the remaining 31 games will deliver just 21 more points for an end-of-season tally of just 31 points. Putting that in to perspective, it is a much lower points total than the third relegation place over the last ten Sky Bet Championship campaigns.
All of this is compounded by the fact that Sunderland have no hand at the helm, the Black Cats having sacked Simon Grayson after just 18 games in charge at the Stadium of Light. His announced departure came just 17 minutes after Tuesday night’s 3-3 draw with fellow strugglers Bolton.
Hope seems to have deserted Sunderland who, in stark honesty, are a side in a free-falling decline and at the wrong end of the table. Luck just isn’t going their way and, unless the right man is appointed to stop the rot, the canker that is there already may worsen.
Should this happen, should Sunderland’s situation continue to lurch from bad to worse, then the Black Cats might have to face the black days of haunting relegation again at the end of this season.
