FOR a moment it looked as if Sunderland had already been condemned to relegation to the Championship. There were players wearing the Black Cats’ white away strip lying devastated on the pitch at the London Stadium and the final whistle had not even blown.

Winston Reid had drilled in a low winner deep into stoppage-time in the last attack of the game.

Sunderland had, as on six other occasions already this season, lost again. That’s two points from nine matches and even crisis club Aston Villa had mustered more than that by this stage last season.

In fact only two other teams in Premier League history have recorded just two points from nine matches and the last of those was Sheffield Wednesday in 1999, when they went down. Manchester City, in 1995-96, were the others and they suffered the same fate.

No wonder Sunderland’s players were dejected, having dug deep on their first ever visit to the former Olympic Stadium and then have their efforts wasted by a lapse in concentration with referee Bobby Madley on the verge of blowing the final whistle.

David Moyes, who has never wavered from his belief that turning Sunderland around will be a long-term project, looked as despondent as he has after a game, while still trying to come up with a positive or two.

“I think the players will know, they don’t always need the manager to tell them,” said Moyes. “I think they understand that lots of the things they did after the opening 30 minutes were good. We had one or two really good chances ourselves.

“Tactically, we struggled in the early part of the game with their formation and system.

“We found it difficult to cope with them, we couldn’t cover all the areas of the pitch we’d have liked. There were one or two things we tried to keep changing to try to get there, and we got there in the end.”

Sunderland have injury problems – big ones for a team already short of quality options to change a game.

When tiredness crept in against West Ham there was a lack of experience and quality to bring off the bench.

There is already an air of resignation among many fans that this season will be the year when they go down, having teetered on the brink for a number of years and dramatically come good in the end.

What hurt the players and supporters more against West Ham was that they had actually worked themselves into a position where they might have even claimed a victory rather than just a point, although a draw would still have been welcomed.

After a shaky start, when Dimitri Payet was denied by Jordan Pickford and hit the post, Sunderland found extra strength and resilience and made it harder for the home side to break them down.

With the exception of Simone Zaza’s overhead kick seconds before half-time that dropped wide, Sunderland actually created a few decent opportunities themselves and it looked as if they would record a first clean sheet of the season.

When Wahbi Khazri found himself clean through on goal, after a pass deflected favourably in his path, he ought to have put Sunderland ahead but instead he rushed his finish and goalkeeper Adrian made a comfortable stop.

Then, with seconds remaining, Reid struck. He had been found in acres of space on the edge of the box after a short corner and Sunderland were slow to close him down.

He picked out the corner of the net, even though Pickford claimed there were West Ham players offside and obstructing his view, but it could be argued the assistant referee was right to keep his flag down.

Moyes said: “I think it’s a hard one for the players because there were a lot of good things in the game, things we were doing a bit better, in quite a few departments.

“Then, in the end, if you don’t get the reward, it’s hard to take and it’s even more galling when you feel it’s down to an incorrect decision against you.

“When we gave the corner away we should have stayed on the ball.

“They take it short, and we allow them to work it to the edge of the box.

“But I’d probably rather them take a short corner than cross it into the box, so there you go.”

Had Khazri found the net, just moments after the restart, then Sunderland would have had a lead to hold on to, rather than find themselves chasing the game.

Now Sunderland, who have a midweek trip to Southampton in the EFL Cup, are having to look at the visit of Arsenal and the subsequent visit to Bournemouth as games they cannot afford to lose.

A failure to collect points in those would see the five-point gap increase and it is hard to imagine any side coming back from an 11-match start without a win – it’s hard enough to picture a way back from nine.