It did not get too personal and the boos were not as loud as they might have been but protests rarely prove this dramatic. The demonstration of discontent staged by Sunderland fans took the form of a mass exodus, with a ground that had been filled with 45,746 spectators appearing half empty by the interval.
Every vacant plastic red seat served as a reproach to Gus Poyet on a day when his stuttering side simply surrendered, conceding four goals to Tim Sherwood’s renascent Aston Villa in the first 45 minutes.
It leaves Ellis Short, Sunderland’s owner, with a very big decision to make. Short and his board had hoped Poyet could limp on in charge until the end of the season but, even though the team remain just above the bottom three, that likelihood must have receded.
A couple of minutes after the final whistle Poyet paused near the mouth of the tunnel, half-turned and took a lingering look around the near-deserted stadium. The body language seemed that of a man who sensed his time was up.
Sherwood’s tenure has begun on a much more optimistic note with a third straight victory suggesting Villa’s relegation worries will soon be banished.
Unlike Poyet, Sherwood’s default mode is adventure and his 4-4-2 formation duly offered Villa real width allied to plenty of crosses for Christian Benteke and Gabriel Agbonlahor.
Sure enough a pleasingly fluent passing move concluded with Leandro Bacuna advancing from right-back and crossing low in Benteke’s direction. Within seconds a wrongfooted Costel Pantilimon was beaten courtesy of the centre-forward’s first-time, 10-yard sidefoot.
Almost immediately, Villa scored again. By way of variation it was a very different type of goal featuring John O’Shea’s misjudgment of Ciaran Clark’s long, high punt forward.
The ball fell kindly to Agbonlahor, who was left one-on-one with Pantilimon, and made no mistake in directing an angled shot into the back of the net.
Boos became audible but it could have been far worse had Scott Sinclair not lent back and skied a close-range shot over the bar when it seemed easier to score. Once again that opening was created by Bacuna’s cross and by now it was abundantly evident that Sherwood had instructed his right-back to join Charles N’Zogbia in attacking Sunderland’s defensively vulnerable left flank at every opportunity.
If Bacuna was enjoying an excellent game so, too, was Agbonlahor. He scored his second after collecting Nzogbia’s delivery, cutting inside one tentative marker and then brushing past a hesitant Wes Brown before shooting low, and powerfully, beyond Pantilimon.
Almost before the Romanian could retrieve the ball from the back of his net a significant number of Sunderland fans had begun streaming towards the exits. Poyet retreated to his dugout where he sat slumped back in his seat, arms folded and eyes fixed firmly on the sky.
A few feet away a season ticket and a red and white scarf were hurled to the ground before stewards ushered their former owner away from the Uruguayan’s immediate orbit.
Soon the police were involved, joining stewards to form a tight cordon behind the home bench and discouraging the growing band of locals who seemed keen to provide Poyet with helpful hints.
How Sunderland’s manager must have wished a magic carpet could land at his feet and whisk him away to almost anywhere else in the world. Such feelings can only have intensified when Benteke connected with yet another Bacuna cross and directed a header beyond Pantilimon from six yards.
The keeper later did well to repel N’Zogbia’s capriciously curling second-half shot in impressive fashion but, by then, the sense of chaos had spread from Sunderland’s central midfield to the popular seats.
While the sight of Roy Keane watching his old teams from the stand prompted a rash of theories that he was poised to return to Wearside in a caretaker manager capacity until the end of the season, confusion reigned as Sebastian Larsson failed to reappear at the start of the second period.
Sunderland were down to 10 men for fives minutes because medics were struggling to stitch a nasty leg wound suffered by the Swede. The collective mental scars sustained by Poyet and his players promise to be considerably harder to treat but, with Villa relaxing a little, they did at least manage to hit a post, Steven Fletcher’s shot beating Brad Guzan but not the woodwork.
That Fletcher injured himself in the act of shooting seemed thoroughly emblematic of the self-destruction which has afflicted so many key personnel at the Stadium of Light this season.
