Team Focus: What Will Defeat at Southampton Mean for Sunderland's Season?

There aren’t many ways of looking at an 8-0 defeat that see anything other than an unmitigated disaster, which is right and logical. Sunderland were terrible in losing to Southampton on Saturday, a pitiful showing by a team who, by the second half, seemed to have given up. That is inexcusable and it’s entirely appropriate that the goalkeeper Vito Mannone – who was as much to blame as anybody – has suggested the players should club together to reimburse the 2500 Sunderland fans who made the trip to St Mary’s.

Gus Poyet spoke of being “embarrassed”, as he should be by a day of ignominy that will live on in the club’s history as the joint record defeat, along with the humiliations at West Ham in 1968 and Watford in 1982. Talk afterwards was of a depressing afternoon and the worry of a team that committed that gravest of sins: not playing for their manager.

Clearly there’s no way of sugar-coating a result like that, yet what does it actually mean in the longer term? Sunderland were the 14th team to lose by seven goals or more in the Premier League era. Of the previous 13, only five went on to be relegated that season. Sunderland weren’t relegated in either of the previous seasons when they lost 8-0. Heavy defeats, of course, can be indicative of a terrible side, one without spirit or fight, but they can also be a sign of a freakish afternoon when everything that can go wrong does go wrong.

Sunderland had the second-best defensive record in the division going into the game. Then Santiago Vergini scored an astonishing own goal. It’s not just that he volleyed the ball unerringly into the bottom corner from the edge of the box, it’s that it’s almost impossible to understand what he was trying to do: he was under no pressure: he could have chested the ball back to his keeper, could have taken the ball down, could have let it go, could have used his left foot. There was no reason to take a swing with his right foot. It was an inexplicable aberration and it’s hardly surprising it left Sunderland rattled.

A misplaced pass from Will Buckley, some sloppy marking and Southampton were two-up. Even then, though, Sunderland should have had a penalty when Steven Fletcher was flipped over by Fraser Forster. In fact, as late as 35 minutes, shortly before the third goal, Whoscored’s average team rating had Sunderland marginally in the ascendant (6.33 to 6.30).

The concern is what followed. Sunderland’s midfield didn’t get tight enough. Lee Cattermole, usually such an inspirational figure, was oddly insipid. Liam Bridcutt scored another own goal, haplessly wandering into the rebound as Mannone saved from Graziano Pellè. Mannone made two dreadful errors. It was shambolic, schoolboy stuff, ludicrous ineptitude on an industrial scale.

And yet perhaps in that, there is some hope for Sunderland. Providing their morale isn’t shattered, provided they respond with an anger at themselves and a ferocious determination to put things right, they can perhaps take solace from the underlying indicators. They actually had more of the ball than Southampton, 53.8% to 46.2%. Southampton only won the shot count 21-13. To put that in context, Hull lost the shot count at Arsenal 25-4 and got away with a 2-2 draw.

Southampton scored an unusually high percentage of their shots. Now in part, of course, that’s because Mannone presented such a limp barrier and because Sunderland proved themselves unable to prevent Southampton working their way into dangerous areas before having shots. But it does also suggest that for Sunderland this was just one of those days, a string of errors leading to a general meltdown. As a team they made just 10 tackles in the game against a season’s average of 19.9, an indication of how the competitive spirit left them.

Although they conceded twice in the first half hour, in that period they pretty much matched Southampton but for a freakish own goal and a moment of sloppiness. The question is why the capitulation followed. For seven games Sunderland defended relatively well; in one they defended atrociously. The key now is to make sure it remains a one-off.

Do you think Sunderland's 8-0 defeat to Southampton will remain a one-off? Let us know in the comments below