Gus Poyet pays the price for Sunderland's poor run of results

GUS POYET'S pal Charlie Oatway could have told him the sack was looming.

Sunderland sack Poyet [AMBIENT]

Oatway, Sunderland’s first-team coach, admitted recently that results against other teams near the bottom are all-important.

He said: “If you don’t beat the teams who are down there with you, you deserve to go down.”

Since then, Sunderland have played Aston Villa, West Brom and Queens Park Rangers at home – and failed to score a single goal while picking up  just one point from those games. Now they are both out of work.

Sunderland do look like a team that deserves to go down. And, just as Poyet got the job because Sunderland were heading towards oblivion under Paolo Di Canio, who was appointed because Martin O’Neill’s side were in trouble, it guaranteed the end of the Uruguayan’s stay on Wearside.

As always, three things dictated a manager’s fate – results, results and results. And Sunderland have won only four times in the league, scoring just 23 goals in 29 games.

Since victory in the Tyne-Wear derby at Newcastle on Boxing Day, Sunderland have won once in 12 league matches and gone out of the FA Cup at League One Bradford.

The table shows there are three worse teams than Sunderland, but all of them have scored more goals and provided more entertainment than Poyet’s dour, one-paced and unambitious outfit.

Then there is the embarrassment factor of an 8-0 defeat at Southampton and those home humiliations against Villa and QPR. Thousands of fans quit the Stadium of Light by half-time on Saturday, many others had already quit on Poyet.

But it is only recently that they turned against a man who took them to the Capital One Cup final a year ago before somehow engineering a dramatic late escape from relegation.

That cup run bought him time, but Poyet has won only 23 of his 75 games during 17 months at Sunderland and doubts about his managerial methods have mushroomed since the turn of the year.

He can have no complaints and offer few excuses.

Unlike Di Canio, Poyet was given a significant say in who arrived at the club and his single-minded determination to bring in players he wanted was one factor in a tense relationship with the director of football, Lee Congerton.

Fabio Borini was the man Poyet craved to sign in the summer after the Liverpool forward spent last season on loan at the Stadium of Light.

It was a pursuit that ended in failure, but only after becoming an obsession that diverted Sunderland away from other more realistic targets.

Jack Rodwell eventually emerged as their high-profile arrival from Manchester City, but – at £10million – he is just one of the players personally picked by Poyet who have not made an impact this season.

Gus PoyetGETTY

Gus Poyet was a forlorn figure on Saturday

Jermain Defoe’s arrival in January did threaten to provide some of the mobility and speed that had been sorely lacking, but Poyet’s inability to channel those qualities only increased doubts about the manager’s tactical nous.

Defoe has always been at his best alongside another striker, but has been left isolated too often while target men such as Steven Fletcher and Connor Wickham have been employed down the left wing.

The boardroom thinking about Poyet is equally based on the bottom line and the financial penalties for dropping out of the Premier League that prompted owner Ellis Short to dispense with O’Neill and Di Canio are about to become even more severe because of the new TV deal.

So, even without Oatway’s guidance, Poyet realised when he was summoned to a meeting at the Stadium of Light that yesterday’s training session was to be his last at the club.

Di Canio maintains that Short, their billionaire owner, must shoulder much of the blame for Sunderland’s failings under his control.

“It’s not Poyet’s fault, because chairman Ellis Short is the real origin of all these troubles,” said Di Canio yesterday.

Poyet may agree in private, but in public he has already admitted where the fault lies. In a bizarre open letter to supporters after their cup exit at Bradford, Poyet highlighted the fact that there is only one man to blame for results.

“I will always accept my responsibility,” he said. 

And that’s what the Uruguayan did yesterday in the boardroom at the Stadium of Light as he became the sixth manager sacked this season by a club in the bottom half of the Premier League.

Short, who did not have a close working relationship with Poyet, said: “I would like to thank Gus for his endeavours during his time at the club, in particular last season’s ‘great escape’ and cup final appearance, which will live long in the memory of every Sunderland fan.

“Sadly, we have not made the progress that any of us had hoped for this season and we find ourselves battling, once again, at the wrong end of the table. We have therefore made the difficult decision that a change is needed.”

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