Maybe we were taking victory over West Bromwich Albion for granted before Saturday's clash, maybe we thought we just had to turn up.

But whatever the reason, the players got exactly what they deserved down at The Hawthorns – a good hiding.

Of course, the ones who didn't deserve such a result, or such a pathetic display, was their loyal travelling fans.

At half-time and full-time, they let the players know exactly what they thought of their performance against the Baggies.

Much is made of the fans being the 12th man and the club needing everyone to get behind them.

Well, what about the players giving the fans what they need – something to be proud of.

Niall Quinn and co deserve credit for cutting season ticket prices next term and making football affordable for kids.

But fans slog their guts out at work all week to fork out vast amounts to follow their club home and away, only to be rewarded with performances such as this one.

Hopefully, the boos from Saturday are still ringing in the players' ears, because they need to take a long, hard look at themselves after this showing.

On Saturday they had the chance to lift themselves further away from the drop zone and give their supporters a glimmer of hope that things were going to be all right.

Instead they let the fans, the club and themselves down.

I'm sure they don't go out intent on getting beat, but on Saturday they might as well have not turned up – at times it looked like some of them hadn't.

After the game, manager Ricky Sbragia said he was left scratching his head as to why Sunderland had performed so badly.

Well, if you don't know Ricky, what chance have the rest of us got?

To be fair, I'm not going to start pointing the finger at the Sunderland boss as the only person at fault.

At the start of Saturday's game, 11 players took to the field in a red and white shirt. Sadly, on this showing, there wasn't too many of them worthy of donning those famous stripes.

Sbragia himself said they should be ashamed of the way they performed.
I wouldn't argue with that, but I'd add that they should be very afraid for their Premier League futures.

Time is fast running out for us to pull ourselves out of the mess we are now in, and the clash with the Baggies represented our best chance of doing just that.

It is increasingly looking like we might have to rely on someone else's failure to save our bacon this season.

Of course, there's no assurances that will happen, but what is abundantly clear is that results like this just aren't good enough.