Moyes insists Sunderland are ‘not that far away’

David Moyes sympathised with Sunderland supporters after the club’s struggles continued with another defeat against West Brom.

Saturday’s 2-0 loss at The Hawthorns saw Sunderland slump back to the bottom of the Premier League table and the players were booed off at both half-time and full-time by those fans who travelled.

The Black Cats, suffering with absences through injury and players away at the African Nations Cup, have now lost nine of their 11 away matches in the league, scoring just six goals, and are three points adrift of safety.

Moyes said: “I totally understand them. I’m a supporter myself, maybe if we had three points more we might be where people would expect us to be. But we are not that far away. A win would have taken us out of the relegation zone.

“The performances recently have not been how we would have liked – and we are the first to admit that – but there are mitigating circumstances for that.

“Sunderland fans have been in this position before – they have seen the team further away (from safety) before. If any fans know about this situation it is our supporters in recent years.”

The “mitigating circumstances” Moyes referred to include a crippling injury list which sees Jordan Pickford, Jan Kirchhoff, Steven Pienaar, Duncan Watmore, Paddy McNair, Lynden Gooch and Lee Cattermole all unavailable while Lamine Kone, Wahbi Khazri and Didier Ndong are at the African Nations Cup.

Sunderland do not play again until Tottenham visit the Stadium of Light on January 31 and Moyes hopes that will allow him to boost his ranks with players returning to the squad.

“Having Victor [Anichebe] back was a big positive for us, however, he did pick up a knock so we will need to check on that. We’ve got over a week until our next game now, hopefully that will let us get some more players back in training, we need it.”