SUNDERLAND 1, BOLTON 4

A MIND-BLOWING £70million spent on players. Five defeats out of six. Two home wins out of nine. In the bottom three. No wonder Roy Keane is thinking of quitting the Stadium of Light.

"You should have gone Christmas shopping," sang the 1,000 Bolton fans to the increasingly frustrated home fans.

It seems that Keano's shopping habits are what keep undermining his attempts to improve the north-east club.

As it was, Bolton's lumbering striker Johan Elmander was the grateful recipient of the presents handed out so generously by the Black Cats defence.

The Swede was once described as "useless" by legendary French coach Guy Roux. Quite what that makes Sunderland is anyone's guess.

There is no balance, no cutting edge, no organisation and no leader on the pitch.

Even skipper Dean Whitehead was the target of fan abuse.

Catch

For a Roy Keane side to look gutless and bereft of passion seems unthinkable. Everything seemed so upbeat when they beat their old enemies Newcastle at home a little over a month ago.

How rapidly their fortunes have changed since then.

RIGHT ON - Gary Cahill fires home his goal for Bolton

Michael Chopra cost Keane £5m and is now back in the Championship at Cardiff.

The Sunderland boss blew £3m on Greg Halford and he is now with Sheffield United.

Anton Ferdinand cost £8m and he can't get in the team. Keeper Craig Gordon cost £9m and he can't catch a cold.

Throw all these facts together and you have enough reasons to fill Santa's sack when explaining why Keane's side are now in such deep trouble.

When Elmander smashed Bolton's fourth 10 minutes after the break the moodier elements of the home support began baying for Keane to stop hiding in the dugout.

They urged him to step into the technical area to try and sort out his shambolic and dejected players.

Keano might have broad shoulders, but if he thought his 100th game in charge would be greeted with a morale-boosting home win against an ordinary team, he was badly wrong.

In fact, the way things are going right now those questions about renewing his contract, which expires next summer, are fading away pretty rapidly.

The day actually started quite well for the home side.

Nowhere

Steed Malbranque's clever pass let in Djibril Cisse and the former Liverpool striker finished well past Jussi Jaaskelainen in the 11th minute.

But then, seemingly from nowhere, Bolton found a route back into the game when Matt Taylor rose high inside the box to beat Gordon with a header.

Seven minutes later the impressive Gary Cahill capitalised on a half-cleared cross from former Sunderland midfielder Gavin McCann and thumped a second past Gordon.

Incredibly, the ponderous Danny Collins was so careless when tidying up at the back that he let in Elmander to comfortably beat Gordon again.

Cue the deafening sound of boos from the majority of the 35,000 crowd. Their mood was hardly improved in the 55th minute when Elmander hammered a fourth into the net to leave Keane looking furious at his hopeless defenders.

They were lucky they did not concede even more.

The menacing Elmander got through again late on but his failure to complete his hat-trick suggested on this occasion that Roux's assessment might not have been as wide of the mark as first thought.

Either way, Keane's priority was being sympathetic to his back four - at least in public.

He said: "We were very poor. But some of these players have been fantastic for me in the last two years, so it is difficult to criticise individual mistakes.

"We have to chill out, have a cup of tea and have a look at things properly. It is vital that we sit down and look at what we can do better."

Cheese

As for Bolton, if they maintain the kind of form that has seen them win their last three games on the road they could be heading for Europe.

And that will really cheese Gary Megson off.

The Bolton boss spent last season's UEFA Cup campaign trying his best to get his side knocked out as they fought a successful battle against relegation.

He greeted every win and performance against foreign opposition as if it was an accident.

The man himself is beginning to win the supporters over as Bolton followed up a single-goal victory at Hull with three down the road at Middlesbrough last week. Then another four here.

The only real element of surprise was that there were not more questions for him in the post-match press conference.

He told the gathered Press men: "I don't know! We score four goals away and win and you've got nothing to say. When we were getting beaten every week I couldn't shut you up.

"In all seriousness, the only difference between now and a few weeks ago is that we have started putting the ball in the net."

They were fortunate to run into a Sunderland side as charitable as this one.

Keane reckons next week will be an ideal chance to right a few wrongs and restore the Black Cats to winning habits in this unforgiving league.

Their destination: Manchester United away.

This article has 4 comments