BEING on a football pitch, surrounded by 32,000 people isn't the best place to be when you're having a bad day at the office.

Ask Sunderland's Jon Stead.

Still searching for his first goal for the Black Cats, the former Huddersfield and Blackburn striker admitted to cringing while playing his part in an abject 1-0 defeat to Birmingham City on Saturday.

It could have all been so different had his smart shot in the first half not been turned around the post by City keeper Nico Vaesen.

But unfortunately that was as close as Sunderland came to hauling themselves off the foot of the Premiership table and the defeat that followed, courtesy of Julian Gray's second-half strike, means they are now five points adrift of their weekend opponents.

"This was a massive game for us and it's heartbreaking," said Stead, who added he felt for those loyal fans who had turned out week in and week out without being able to savour a victory.

"You have got to feel for them. You can see people leaving from 20 minutes before the end of the game and you can't argue with that. They deserve better, they pay good money and they come to watch a football team play that should be doing much better than they are doing.

"I can totally sympathise with them because I am stood there on the field, watching the game and cringing at times as well."

Stead said seeing the name of Sunderland propping up the Premiership table did not make good reading.

"It's embarrassing," he said. "And that performance, at times, was embarrassing. I don't want to sound too negative, and I am trying to keep a positive spin on things, but that just isn't acceptable."

Sunderland face Liverpool at home on Wednesday night and Stead knows it provides a quick opportunity to consign Saturday's game to the history books.

"Wednesday is a good opportunity against a side we have done well against earlier in the season (1-0 defeat)," he said. "Liverpool might come up here expecting they can walk all over us, so it's an opportunity for us to get stuck in and start playing some of the football that we have produced earlier in the season."

In order to do that, though, Sunderland have to stop throwing in the towel if things aren't going their way.

"We have got to learn that if we do go a goal behind, we have got to keep doing the same things that we have at the start of the game," Stead said. "That's people wanting the ball and being confident on it and knowing that we can play.

"I think there's probably too many of us who let our heads drop down in the final stages of games. It's hard to play your normal game when things are on top of you and things are against you. That's where we have got to be a lot stronger mentally and believe that we are in the game until the final whistle."

Read more about Sunderland here.