SUNDERLAND 1 CRYSTAL PALACE 4

STANDING in the bowels of the Stadium of Light, attempting to come to terms with yet another calamitous collapse on home soil, Jack Rodwell conceded that Sunderland have a habit of taking “two steps forward and one step back”. If only they were that progressive.

Saturday’s dramatic defeat to Crystal Palace, which saw the Black Cats concede four goals in the space of 14 chaotic second-half minutes, didn’t just negate much of the positivity that had accompanied the previous weekend’s derby win over Newcastle, it represented the kind of humiliating embarrassment that has become all too common over the course of the last few seasons. Some might say last few decades.

In so many ways, this was classic Sunderland. Take something uplifting, and turn it completely on its head. The club’s players were queuing up last week to talk of a new start, of not allowing the Newcastle victory to be an oasis of hope amongst a desert of dross, yet for the fourth time in succession, a win in the biggest game of all was followed by a defeat in the club’s next outing.

Proving a letdown appears to be an integral part of Sunderland’s DNA, but even by their own laughable standards, there was something especially unpalatable in the sight of Yannick Bolasie effectively picking himself off the floor to complete his 11-minute hat-trick while John O’Shea, Santiago Vergini and Costel Pantilimon floundered around in their own penalty area powerless to stop him.

The extent of Sunderland’s second-half collapse was alarming given the lack of breathing space at the bottom of the table and the difficulty of the challenges that lie ahead, but it was hardly without precedent.

In the home game before the derby, the Black Cats shipped four goals in the space of 28 first-half minutes against Aston Villa. This was every bit as bad, and questions inevitably have to be asked about the resolve and application of a group of players that have now collapsed spectacularly on two separate occasions in the space of a month.

Throw in the eight-goal defeat at Southampton at the start of the season, and you have a mounting weight of evidence that suggests too many Sunderland players are ready to throw in the towel when the going becomes difficult.  

“I don’t think it’s a fragility thing,” countered Rodwell, whose willingness to speak after the final whistle was at least an acknowledgement that the failings could not be ignored. “I’m sure we’ll have a look at the goals, and there were obviously mistakes in there.

“Clearly, we need to cut those out, but it’s definitely not an attitude thing. It’s not a mentality problem that we’ve got, because we did so well in the derby, which is the biggest game with the most pressure.

“That’s where you have to show character, and we did. It’s not that. We’ll have to look into the goals and really nail down what went wrong. I think it was about errors more than anything – the mentality is good.”

As this week has proved though, words count for little when the contradictory evidence on the pitch is so overwhelming.

Sunderland’s habit of conceding a flurry of goals in a short, sharp sequence smacks of either mental weakness or a chronic lack of application. Neither trait is a good one to have.

That said, there were other issues at play at the weekend, and as he assesses the squad he has inherited for his survival mission, Dick Advocaat will surely be concluding that it is all too easy to see why Sunderland have spent the best part of two seasons battling against the drop.

Defensively, this is a team with huge problems, most notably a debilitating lack of pace that is all too easily exposed by opponents with quick, mobile attackers.

Gabriel Agbonlahor, Scott Sinclair and Charles N’Zogbia ran riot for Aston Villa, and four weeks on, it was Bolasie, Jason Puncheon and Wilfried Zaha who were able to punch a series of holes into the Sunderland back four.

O’Shea in particular was completely unable to cope with the speed of Crystal Palace’s attacking, and to compound matters, the Irishman was also brushed aside much too easily by Glenn Murray, who provided an effective focal point for the Palace attack.

Vergini was equally as ineffective as Palace poured forward in the second half, and while Patrick van Aanholt and Billy Jones might offer some useful assets in attack, both full-backs left gaping holes for the visiting wingers to exploit.

Lee Cattermole, mindful no doubt of the senseless first-half booking for a shirt pull that forced him to walk a disciplinary tightrope for the rest of the game, seemed reluctant to track the midfield runners, and the result was a free-for-all that saw Palace score four.

Murray headed home the first at the back post after Bolasie was given too much space on the right, before Bolasie claimed the first of his personal treble as he raced on to a Murray flick on and slotted home.

His second was the best of the lot, with him outpacing O’Shea to reach Mile Jedinak’s floated pass before chipping over an advancing Pantilimon, and Sunderland’s misery was complete when Murray brushed aside a dawdling O’Shea to enable Bolasie to complete his hat-trick.

There was time for Connor Wickham to reduce the arrears as he volleyed home van Aanholt’s cross, and Sunderland hit the woodwork in stoppage time when Julian Speroni turned van Aanholt’s shot onto the crossbar, but the fight-back was definitely a case of too little, too late.

“We seem to get ourselves into positions to kick-start our seasons and really kick on,” said Rodwell. “But then it never seems to happen that way. We always seem to take two steps forward and then one step back, and we have to correct that. It felt like we were moving forward last weekend, but this is a step in the wrong direction.”