LONG after Sunderland's vanquished players had departed to a standing ovation fit for victors, one question still lingered over the Stadium of Light.

Why wasn't Mick McCarthy appointed sooner?

After all, if a fortnight's worth of work with the Sunderland squad can produce the sort of performance that forced Chelsea to strain every sinew, what miracles could McCarthy have worked had he been afforded more time to rescue their season?

It was a supreme irony that arguably Sunderland's best display for more than a year should see them equal the club record for the most consecutive League defeats and games without a win.

Another loss at Birmingham City this Saturday would confirm what everyone has known for at least two months: that Sunderland will be relegated.

Yet for the first time since the early days of Howard Wilkinson's ultimately ill-fated reign, when a five-match unbeaten run gave Sunderland false hope, the club's long-suffering followers have genuine reasons to be cheerful.

Bob Murray must of course be praised for bringing such an abrupt halt to Wilkinson and Steve Cotterill's disastrous double act.

But had the Sunderland chairman employed McCarthy a week or two sooner, who could now claim with real confidence that the amiable Yorkshireman would not have at least given the club a fighting chance of staying up?

After bordering on the inept for so much of the season, Kevin Kyle terrorised one of the best defences in the country.

"Our young fella caused them all sorts of problems. Ian Evans said 'Well played' to John Terry when he came on, and Terry said, 'Phew' because Kevin had given him a tough time," McCarthy said.

And in midfield there was Sean Thornton, biting into tackles and emerging as the closest thing Sunderland have had to an accomplished playmaker since Claudio Ryena was injured.

The presence of Gavin McCann, on his first appearance under McCarthy on his return from a two-match suspension, added the steel that was absent from their previous two games.

"I thought Gavin was a good player before but he's better than I thought. I like his attitude, and he's my kind of player," McCarthy said.

One feared the worst on arriving at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.

After all, if struggling Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United could record conclusive 2-0 wins over Sunderland, what would Champions League-chasing Chelsea do to them?

But we witnessed a different Sunderland; a team that was completely unrecognisable from the one that surrendered so meekly at Upton Park two weeks earlier.

Kyle's physical approach unsettled Chelsea - certainly, he carried far more menace than £8.2m misfit Tore Andre Flo would have mustered - and Sunderland took control from there.

Starved of service, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and Gianfranco Zola were on the fringes as Kyle led the line with purpose and no little skill.

Michael Gray, booed by some Sunderland fans in their last two games, looked considerably more assured than he has for some time.

And after the best season of his career, Frank Lampard was anaemic against the vibrant Thornton, McCann and Kevin Kilbane.

Sunderland hustled and harried their more illustrious visitors into mistakes, and Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri - whose post-mortems are refreshingly candid, in contrast to the bosses of some big clubs - gave credit to the Premiership's bottom club.

"Sunderland were better than us in the first half and deserved to be in front," he said. "Carlo Cudicini made two great saves and, early on, their midfield was better than ours."

A flowing one-touch move involving Kilbane, Thornton and Gray was a vignette of the confidence that was coursing through the hosts' veins.

"Going down!" was the Chelsea fans' taunt. "One-nil to the Nationwide," countered Sunderland's supporters.

The secret to Sunderland's resurgence was McCarthy's decision to tinker with their tactics. By outnumbering Chelsea in midfield, they managed to seize the initiative - and it highlighted another area where Wilkinson had gone wrong.

Wilkinson played three at the back at Bolton and Charlton Athletic, and the result was two hard-fought draws that could easily have been victories.

Thereafter, he stayed loyal to his stoic belief in 4-4-2, and Sunderland embarked upon an almost inexorable slide towards the Nationwide League.

McCarthy said: "I changed it around because I thought we'd been a bit lightweight at times in midfield. We were getting stretched, and I thought it would cause us problems if Zola dropped in the hole behind one or two centre-forwards.

"I thought we negated that problem very well in the first half because we were the better team.

"I spoke to Claudio Ranieri and he was very positive about our performance; he said he thought they were playing Real Madrid."

Who would have envisaged that Sunderland would make Chelsea change their tactics? That they did, and unfortunately for the Black Cats it was Ranieri's introduction of Carlton Cole as a third striker that decided the outcome of the game.

"They scored their first as I was trying to get Marcus Stewart to drop as another midfield player," McCarthy noted.

Sunderland, who were good value for Thornton's spectacular 12th-minute goal, refused to be cowed by Zola's equaliser early in the second half.

McCann twice forced Cudicini into smart stops, but a superb turn and shot from Cole five minutes from time summed up Sunderland's fortunes. So, too, did Thornton's late free-kick that hit the post with the Chelsea goakeeper.

Sunderland are going down. But maybe, just maybe, their stock is now on the rise.

Result: Sunderland 1 Chelsea 2.

Read more about Sunderland here.