Sunderland has been a club which has experienced years of underachievement for some time now. The Black Cats always seem to be fighting relegation at the business end of the year irrespective of how they start their season or with the personnel available to them. In order to solve this continuing problem, the management has experimented with a lot of different things one of them being the changing of managers. Despite those changes, there has been no improvement in the proceedings as with every new manager the old story seemed to have persisted with the squad. When Big Sam left for the England job, David Moyes was brought in to lead the club forward.
The Scotsman very rightly declared that he wants to change the cycle in which the club seems to be stuck for some seasons now and bring about a change in the overall mentality of the squad. However, it wasn’t long before Moyes realized that the quality at his disposal is the worst he has had to work within the Premier League and within the second week of the new season, the manager told the fans to be prepared for yet another battle for top-flight survival.
The summer Transfer window was an opportunity for the new manager to get things sorted out but he found it extremely difficult to persuade players to join him at the Stadium of Light. The situation became so tough that the club targeted 5 signings on the deadline day and was left only with 2 players finally securing their moves to the club. Of the two is club record signing defensive midfielder Didier N’dong and young defender Jason Denayer.
The proposed moves for Goalkeeper Mika fell through at the last moment with Boavista unable to finalise the paperwork before the deadline and there was also a strange incident of Yann M’Vila’s move not materializing with the player reportedly tweeting that Sunderland didn’t pick up his phone.
M’Vila has already an agreement in place to join the Black Cats in the January transfer window but with the squad looking average and thin at places, Moyes wanted the player to join them on the deadline day. The deal fell through as Rubin Kazan refused to lower their demands of £8.5m for the player who is out of contract in four months. Sunderland had to deal with a number of disappointments on the deadline day as after M’Vila’s failed move the deal for the Goalkeeper couldn’t be completed and the club was unable to bring in any striker, a position where they are desperately short at the moment.
The Black Cats have appealed to Fifa to get special dispensation for completing Mika’s deal while Moyes is banking on signing free agents in Victor Anichebe or Emanuel Adebayor to solve his striker issues. It is getting pretty desperate for the Tyne and Wear region club and the deadline day disappointments are bad omens which reflects that luck has left them too.
