A BRUTALLY honest David Moyes has admitted Sunderland are paying for their panicked summer recruitment, and conceded the club deserve to be at the foot of the Premier League table.

The Black Cats slumped to the bottom of the league when they threw away a two-goal lead to crash to a 3-2 defeat at the hands of Crystal Palace on Saturday, and having defended his players in the early weeks of his reign, Moyes turned the spotlight on his under-performing squad by urging them to start “taking responsibility” for their actions.

However, the Sunderland boss has also questioned whether the current side is good enough to turn things around and hinted that major surgery during the January transfer window is the only way to guarantee another successful survival campaign.

Moyes signed ten players after replacing Sam Allardyce in late July, but clearly feels he was handicapped by the timing of his appointment at a relatively late stage of the transfer window.

“I think we’re probably paying the price for not recruiting earlier and maybe the (managerial) situation,” said Moyes, who is still to record his first league victory as Sunderland boss. “But what would you say about the year before that or the year before that? Would you say you were paying the price for recruitment then or are there other reasons?

“Ultimately, you have to have good players on the pitch, and at the moment we’re not getting enough good players out there.

“Do we have to improve players or get better ones? I think both. We are working, but I think we know we’re going to have to improve on what we’ve got to give ourselves a chance.”

Clearly, there will be a need to strengthen significantly in January, but Sunderland play 13 more league games before the transfer window reopens, so Moyes cannot pin all of his hopes of an influx of new arrivals at the turn of the year.

He will have to work with what he has in the interim, and his main priority will be to tighten a defence that continues to leak goals at an alarming rate.

Palace scored three goals in the space of 30 second-half minutes, with all three strikes owing much to some lacklustre defensive work.

Moyes was alarmed by his side’s lack of resolve as they tossed away their two-goal advantage, and was left to bemoan some basic defensive errors that ultimately proved costly.

“The players did not take responsibility,” he said. “I’ve always felt we needed to win tough games which maybe we weren’t expected to or when we didn’t play so well – and I didn’t think we played great on Saturday even though we were 2-0 up.

“We were desperate to pick up our first three points of the season, but I just felt we didn’t defend for our lives when we were 2-0 up, I didn’t see that. I didn’t see people saying, ‘I’ll make sure we do that’.

“At 2-0 you might have said this was Sunderland’s day. I can only put it down to us not doing the basics well enough - not heading it and kicking it when we get the chance, picking up and marking, which we needed to.”

Sunderland have returned to the foot of the table for the first time since a similar stage of last season, when they dropped into 20th position after losing at West Brom in Allardyce’s first game in charge.

West Brom are their next opponents at the Stadium of Light in five days’ time, and while they are hardly detached from the teams just outside the bottom three, there is clearly a huge psychological need to record a first league win of the campaign.

“It’s been a tough period,” admitted Moyes. “I wanted to be successful and win games. I knew it wasn’t all going to be easy, that’s for sure, but I did expect to come in and find myself winning games and challenging.

“At the moment, we’re struggling to win games, but the club’s been in that position last year and the year before – probably last year was worse in some ways. We have to try and do what they did and find a way to get out of it. We’re working towards finding a team that can win.”