SHORTLY after his dismissal from Old Trafford, David Moyes described the task of succeeding Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United as “near enough the impossible job”. Looking back now, he must regard it as a doddle.

If you’re looking for the truly impossible, try managing Sunderland at the moment. If Moyes thought the challenge of winning over the hearts and minds of a fanbase still in love with one of the greatest managers English football has ever seen was beyond him, goodness knows what he makes of his current situation. Merely winning a game would be a considerable triumph on Wearside.

Sunderland have been through some tortuous times throughout their existence, but ten games into a season, things have never been as bad as this. Never before has a Sunderland side picked up just two points from their opening ten league matches. Not ever. And that’s in some 137 years of playing the game.

Even in the embarrassing relegation seasons under Mick McCarthy, Sunderland were well ahead of their current position at an identical stage. In 2002-03, when they finished with 19 points, they amassed eight in their first ten matches. In 2005-06, when they finished with a then-record points low of 15, they had scraped together five by this stage.

Since the formation of the Premier League, no side has started in a poorer fashion. Manchester City had an identical record in the 1995-96 season, and ended up being relegated. Derby’s 11-point haul in the 2007-08 campaign is the current record low, yet the Rams still had six points on the board ten games in.

“Lots of people will think they are doomed,” said talismanic former chairman Niall Quinn, who watched Sunderland’s latest capitulation in his role as a television analyst with Sky Sports. “They have a lot of soul-searching to do. Quite frankly, it feel like death by a thousand cuts - they have got to do something different now.”

Should that something be a change of manager? Last season, Sunderland were also at the foot of the table after seven matches, with Dick Advocaat conceding he did not see how he could prevent them slipping into the Championship. Advocaat left, Sam Allardyce arrived, and the Black Cats eventually hauled themselves to the giddy heights of 17th position.

Every season, Sunderland hit the managerial panic button, and every season a change at the top seems to produce the required result. This time around, however, it feels as though the rot is already terminal. With that in mind, would it make any sense to appoint a seventh different manager in the space of three-and-a-half years?

Opinion amongst the fanbase seems to be divided, although the absence of any sustained anti-Moyes sentiment in the closing stages of Saturday’s defeat to Arsenal suggests the prevailing mood is one of grim resignation rather than festering resentment aimed at the manager.

Some will claim Moyes is culpable for the current mess because he dismantled the side he inherited from Allardyce – partly through choice and partly through circumstance – and squandered more than £27m on sub-standard players.

There is merit to that argument, although a degree of caution is required when totting up the funds that were available to Moyes during the summer. The headline price of the deals for Didier Ndong and Papy Djilobodji in particular are not necessarily the fees Sunderland paid up front.

Moyes is having to manage a team that is simply not good enough, and the blame for that situation lies firmly at the door of owner Ellis Short. Years of bad decisions and desperately poor buys have left Sunderland in a financial mess, and having squandered or loaned more than £200m, Short has clearly decided enough is enough.

He would like to sell up, and is therefore reluctant to tip yet more of his money down a bottomless pit. Despite the spectre of relegation looming large, it would be foolish to expect a radical investment in January.

With that in mind, does it make sense to pay off Moyes in order to spend more money on a manager who is willing to work within the current financial constraints? Allardyce had grown extremely frustrated before England came calling, and will be exceptionally reluctant to return. So who else are you looking at? Nigel Pearson? Roy Hodgson? The list is hardly appealing.

At some stage, Sunderland are going to have to plan for the long-term and look to rebuild in a stable environment. For all the pain that is currently being experienced, that time might well have arrived.

“At the moment, I’m spending quite a lot of time in a darkened room,” said Moyes. “It makes me feel lousy and I don’t feel good about it, but it’s what a football manager has to do.”

Moyes will have been feeling particularly lousy on Saturday night after his Sunderland side were ripped apart by an Arsenal team who are once again threatening to be title contenders.

Jermain Defoe cancelled out Alexis Sanchez’s headed opener from the penalty spot midway through the second half, but Arsenal would already have been out of sight by then had Mezut Ozil not spurned two excellent first-half chances.

Defoe’s goal, which came after Petr Cech upended Duncan Watmore in the area, handed Sunderland an undeserved lifeline, but they were duly swatted aside by a breath-taking burst of three Arsenal goals in six-and-a-half minutes.

Olivier Giroud scored the first two within seven minutes of coming on as a substitute, volleying home Kieran Gibbs’ cross with a neat first-time finish before stealing ahead of Papy Djilobodji to head home Ozil’s corner at the front post.

Sanchez completed the rout with an embarrassing amount of ease as he turned unchallenged on the edge of the six-yard box before nonchalantly slotting past Jordan Pickford.

“I feel pity for him (Moyes),” said Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger. “I know he’s a top-quality manager, but at the moment it’s difficult for him. We have all gone through difficult periods in our lives. He has gone through difficult periods at Everton and always come out stronger, and I’m sure he will do that here.”