If you listen to a certain national radio station, chances are every now and then, somewhere either side of a squeaky Brummie in the morning, you’ll hear someone talking about how “north east football is in crisis”, because the Mags have lost a few games and their fickle mob are screaming for someone’s head.

Granted, this usually comes on the back of a weekend that isn’t rare these days when all three clubs have lost, but is anyone really surprised? While a few of us had high hopes for this season (be real though, Europe was never a feasible aim), our current plight is pretty much what everyone predicted, especially after our clutch of summer signings from the Championship. For the first time in what seems like ages, none of the newly-promoted sides have set the Premier League on fire. We’ve had nobody doing a Reading or (ironically) a Sunderland, as all three sides have stayed near the bottom of the league. Or in Derby’s case, right at the bottom of it.

Let’s look at why Sunderland are supposedly in crisis. Granted, having spent most of the winter moving up and down out of the bottom three like a whore’s drawers, we’re not in a healthy spot, especially considering our transfer activity. So far, the £9m spent on Craig Gordon hasn’t exactly seemed like a good deal. Neither has the £5m we dropped on Michael Chopra, while the money we’ve spent on Paul McShane, Danny Higginbotham and Kieran Richardson has seen varying levels of success (although to be fair, Kieran has been out for action for four months with injury!)

In truth, with Kenwyne Jones being the only sure fire hit signing of the summer, our position cannot be of a surprise to anyone, especially when you consider the players Keane had to work with twelve months ago and where we are now. At times, our squad has looked pretty threadbare; but that’s not been a bad thing, as we’re finally giving youth team players a chance without them having to go through the football equivalent of purgatory (aka a few seasons in the reserve team). Still, that’s not to say we’ve not helped our cause with the unexplained disappearance of certain members of our squad in recent months.

So, this so-called “crisis” isn’t really a shock, and the same goes with Middlesbrough, not least because of the inexperienced managers in charge of both sides. At least the good thing is, as long as Messrs Keane and Southgate show that “ex players don’t always fail miserably as managers”, it’ll always give that lot hope that their Messiah can do a job for them. And then we can watch them melt down as they’re left to decide whether they can bring themselves to call for his head after one game in charge!