When Dick Advocaat entered Sunderland’s dressing room after the final whistle everyone’s eyes seemed fixed firmly on the floor. “It was very quiet,” he said. “Nobody spoke. That silence said everything.”
Advocaat is nothing if not self-assured but even he seemed disconcerted by his team’s surrender. How alarmed was he, someone inquired. A long pause followed. “Worried, yes,” said Gus Poyet’s successor. “Very worried. I believe we can survive but, if we carry on performing like this, then we have no chance.”
By the 62nd minute, when Crystal Palace’s Yannick Bolasie completed a brilliant hat-trick, most of the 42,000 crowd had left. “I understand it even if I wasn’t happy about it,” said the home side’s manager. “Like me they are very worried about the future.”
Although the Wearsiders remain perched above the relegation zone they have won only five league games all season and found themselves outpaced, outmoved, outthought and outworked by Alan Pardew’s team.
After the win against Newcastle it was a crushing disappointment compounded by comparing the respective CVs of Saturday’s sides. Whereas the careers of most Palace players are on upward trajectories – in 2010 for instance Bolasie could be found at Barnet, James McArthur at Hamilton and Jason Puncheon with MK Dons – the supposed promise of, among others, Sunderland’s Jack Rodwell, Connor Wickham and Adam Johnson stalled after their arrival at the Stadium of Light.
Barely a month into the job Advocaat knows there is a problem. “We don’t create chances even though we play with three strikers,” he said. “That means something’s wrong. We have to find out how we can improve it.”
After collecting 25 points from 36 since taking charge of Palace Pardew has no such concerns. He relished exacting brutal revenge for the four straight wins Sunderland recorded against his Newcastle side while reminding his former north-east public he is not so shabby a manager after all.
“All week we had team meetings about exploiting the gaps when Sunderland came forward and it came off to a tee,” said Bolasie, whose deflected cross-shot allowed the impressive Glenn Murray to head the first goal.
With John O’Shea and Santiago Vergini falling into defensive pieces, Bolasie proceeded to shoot beneath Costel Pantilimon and then lob Sunderland’s goalkeeper before squeezing his final shot inside a post.
Wickham’s late scoring volley could not dim Pardew’s joy. “We only need to add two or three players and we could be a real force next season,” he said. “It’s not often as a manager you can be detached but at 3-0 it was a case of standing on the touchline, admiring my team and enjoying it.”
There was nothing pleasurable about Rodwell’s afternoon. Fortunate to be only booked for a dangerous lunge at McArthur his was an otherwise anonymous performance. Yet unlike most colleagues, at least the £10m midfielder was prepared to discuss Sunderland’s plight.
“Our heads just dropped,” he said. “We always seem to take one step forward and then two steps back. We have to correct that. There’s six games left and it’s in our hands. If things go wrong we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.”
Man of the match Yannick Bolasie (Crystal Palace)
