BY common consensus, Newcastle United have nothing left to play for this season. With seven games remaining, and just nine points now separating the Magpies from the Premier League relegation zone, there might still be time for that theory to be put to the test.

There have been much heavier derby defeats during the record run of results that now stands at five successive Sunderland victories, but none saw Newcastle as comprehensively outplayed as they were yesterday. From a black-and-white perspective, this certainly feels like the bottom of the barrel being scraped.

For all John Carver’s pre-match bluster about Newcastle’s players not being outworked or lacking motivation or intensity, it was the 78th minute before the visitors mustered their first shot on target, and even that was a relatively tame effort from Remy Cabella that was easily beaten away by Costel Pantilimon.

Ayoze Perez spurned a decent chance of an equaliser with two minutes remaining, but had he scored, Newcastle’s point would have been the most ill-gotten of gains. Their performance, one-paced, insipid and dispassionate throughout, merited absolutely nothing.

All of which brings us back to the debates we seem to have been having endlessly ever since Mike Ashley put away his replica shirt and began to prioritise profits over points and financial stability over silverware.

Assuming Newcastle survive this season – and given that their next two games are against Liverpool and Tottenham, that can hardly be taken for granted – the summer break will be the most important for many years.

This is a club on its knees, devoid of quality on the field, lacking a figure of authority in the dug-out and with a gaping chasm now separating the supporters from the people making the decisions in the boardroom.

There have been furtive promises of a “net spend” once the transfer window opens, but quite what that means when the likes of Moussa Sissoko and Cheick Tiote appear to be edging towards the exit door remains to be seen.

What is undeniable is that major changes are needed, and after yesterday’s embarrassment, that shift surely has to encompass the identity of the head coach.

Carver is an admirable character, but his record now reads played 12, won two, drew three and lost seven. That hardly screams of someone who merits a permanent appointment, and while he can point to the absence of the likes of Fabricio Coloccini and Papiss Cisse as mitigation for his side’s latest derby struggles, this was surely a game the former assistant had to win if he was to court the popularity of the Newcastle fans.

This being Newcastle, popularity or unpopularity counts for nothing when the extent of Ashley’s control is unfettered, but even the Magpies owner must have been watching yesterday’s events with a growing acceptance that the status quo is not the answer.

Alan Pardew’s comments over the weekend that he felt he could do “a better job at the top teams” might have caused one or two eyebrows to be raised, but watching Newcastle’s players stumble their way through what should have been their biggest game of the season, it was hard not to wonder how the former Magpies manager had guided his side to 26 points from 19 matches. They’ve certainly not come close to repeating that ratio in the wake of his departure.

Ultimately, of course, the players have to take responsibility for that, and while the lack of passion and character that was apparent at the Stadium of Light was a damning indictment, it is the general lack of quality that is more worrying.

Newcastle are a poor side, fortunate to be occupying a mid-table position, and on the evidence of yesterday’s game, Daryl Janmaat is probably the only player that would get in Sunderland’s team, let alone a side competing in the upper echelons of the table. Jonas Gutierrez, trying his best in an unfamiliar holding midfield role, should also be immune to the criticism that can be levelled at his team-mates.

While Sunderland brimmed with purpose and slick interplay from the off, Newcastle’s players laboured ineffectually. When Sammy Ameobi booted the ball out of play with no one around him midway through the second half, it perfectly summed up the visitors’ travails.

Ameobi is one of the players who has surely run out of lives in a Magpies shirt, although he is hardly alone. Why Yoan Gouffran is consistently selected in the starting XI is unfathomable, and for all his abundant talent, Remy Cabella’s lack of end product has rendered him irrelevant in a host of matches this season.

Sissoko, lauded as a world-class midfielder, looks both disinterested and over-estimated, while Perez has lost much of the lustre that propelled him through the first half of the season. The less said about second-half substitute Emmanuel Riviere, who is still to score a single Premier League goal, the better.

In an ideal world, Newcastle would buy an entirely new team in the summer, but this isn’t an ideal world and for all the talk of investment, Ashley and Lee Charnley will surely stick with their well-established template of scouring Europe for some bargain buys.

That policy resulted in the posting of record £18m profits last week, but it has also seen the current Newcastle side create the worst kind of history by becoming the first in the club’s existence to suffer five successive derby defeats.

In the stands at least, that kind of record hurts. It is sucking the life out of a once-proud football club, and for all his shortcomings, Carver’s emotional reaction in the post-match press conference proves that he, at least, understands the pain that was being experienced on Tyneside last night.

The players? It’s hard to conclude that they care, such was the pathetic nature of their efforts. The owner? Who knows. But after championing last month’s “record profits” with a triumphal press release, the reality of the state of things at Newcastle United was staring him in the face at the Stadium of Light.