Sunderland's Players Aren't As Good As They Think They Are

To lose to WBA - a side so bad that even Newcastle United managed to beat them at the Hawthorns, their only Premier League win in 2009 - was a dreadful result and the players should hang their heads in shame for their complacency, lack of professionalism and misplaced arrogance.

Having won at home against hapless Hull City, they may have thought the trip to the Hawthorns was a formality and they certainly played like it, which is normally a recipe for disaster no matter how good you are.

Sunderland's players may like to think they belong in the Premier League, but they are a mediocre lot at best and it's about time they were reminded of it. Ability can be replaced by hardwork, effort, organisation and team spirit, but Sunderland haven't had much of that knocking around for months if you ask me.

As for Sbragia, I've been arguing for weeks that I couldn't see how the Scot was going to be given the job long term and surely there is absolutely no chance of that happening now.

What sort of authority he carries in the dressing room I don't know, but things have gone badly wrong for him and chairman Niall Quinn, who in case you have forgotten, is still desperately trying to punt cut-price season tickets to a Wearside public which simply isn't buying into his vision of the future in the numbers the club envisaged.

The problem is, what division will the new manager take over in because Sunderland are teetering on the edge of yet another relegation at the end of a season we expected them to at least finish in the top half of the table.

To make matters worse, Roy Keane has returned to football with Ipswich Town and suddenly Sunderland are being reminded of what they have lost at precisely the time they are suffering yet another crisis under his successor.

All those wonderful memories will have come flooding back; the hope and expectation he brought, the glamour, the kudos, the national profile and the dreams of European football as Newcastle lurched from one disaster to the next under the Mike Ashley regime.

Then again, let's not forget that Keane spent upwards of £70m by the time he flounced off and the team full of expensive never will bes and inflated egos was built by him.

He just had the good sense to abandon ship before it got to this point with his reputation largely intact, as the reaction to his appointment at Portman Road illustrates. He has a lot to answer for, of course, but he has gone, which leaves Quinn and Sbragia without a chair and the music has stopped.

Quinn is a great guy and a passionate and committed supporter of Sunderland football club. He is, to a large extent, everything you would want a chairman to be, but he made the risky call to appoint Sbragia at the same time as trying to convince supporters that the club was still moving forward on the journey Keane had initially fuelled.

Instead, the club has stagnated, stuck in another relegation battle which they should have been out of weeks ago because the players have under-performed. It is a of their own making and it is one they must clear up.