Sunderland have been slammed after a disastrous defeat to Huddersfield Town.
Sunderland headed into the clash three games unbeaten, putting six goals past Stoke City and Plymouth Argyle on home soil.
However, their away form remained a problem tonight as they were beaten 1-0 at the John Smith’s Stadium.
An avoidable free-kick led to a poor parry from Anthony Patterson, landing at the feet of Matty Pearson who scored the only goal of the game.
Huddersfield could have added a couple of goals to their scoreline but prevented extreme embarrassment for Sunderland, who failed to show any major improvements during the second half.
With the Black Cats dropping down to tenth in the Championship table, journalist Michael Graham heavily criticised the disappointing performance from Michael Beale’s side.
He wrote on X: “Nowhere near good enough from #SAFC. Slow, ponderous, creating nothing and concede an incredibly soft goal. It happens far too often, and they’re an irritating team to watch when it does.”
He followed it up with another post that read: “Worst performance of the season for me.”
Another embarrassing day for Sunderland
It was another disaster-class from Sunderland, who would surely have been brimming with confidence after their convincing victory over Plymouth at the weekend.
There were very few individuals that could take any credit from tonight’s game and it was astonishing how so many of them could go from looking so strong in the second half against the Pilgrims, to being so poor this time round.
It’s painful to see how little progress we have made since we last lost to Huddersfield in November, where we arguably put on a slightly better performance than today.
Michael Beale had just started to earn himself a bit of breathing space after recent games, but tonight’s display puts him right back in the firing line and not just for the performance – his substitutions were poor too.
The 43-year-old is under huge pressure to get a result against Birmingham City next time out, because a battering from our former manager will not go down well at all.
While the gap between ourselves and the play-offs is still small, we don’t seem to be taking advantage of that and just keep knocking ourselves back.
It is a humiliating performance and result, made worse by Patrick Roberts’ injury that forced him down the tunnel and left us with 10 men.