Sunderland Relegated – Bob Murray Not Taking The Blame

So Sunderland have finally been relegated with five games to go and the only glimmer of respect they can garner from a shocking season back in the Premiership is to have survived until mid-April before mathematics made it impossible for them to even pretend that they wouldn’t be a Championship side next season.

Chairman Bob Murray has spoken of how demoralising and disappointing the season has been for the club and their long suffering supporters, especially after the glory of last year’s promotion campaign but I’ve studied what he’s said and there seems to be no mention of Murray himself doing the honourable thing and falling on his own sword.

Manager Mick McCarthy was sacrificed to silence the baying Stadium of Light hordes during the season with Murray making it clear he blamed Mick for the side’s hopeless record this season. Again he made no mention of the pitiful levels of funding available to McCarthy, the lack of pull for making signings to Wearside and the lack of strength the promotion winning Sunderland side had due to the cost cutting exercise Mick McCarthy was forced to undertake on his appointment after the last shambles of a Premiership campaign under Peter Reid, Howard Wilkinson and finished off by McCarthy.

At some point club chairmen need to stand back and realise that the problems of surviving in the Premiership these days are all too often drip fed down from boardroom level due to lack of adequate investment and short term-ism management policies put in place by boards of directors who are always looking to the bottom line but not over the horizon.

Some day we’ll see a club chairman stand up, put his hands in the air and say “I failed, I shot the messenger and didn’t give them any chance of success and I’ll be resigning to show how much I’ve learned about my lack of judgement”. I won’t be holding my breath waiting on it though.