Sunderland suffer inevitable relegation after losing identity and years of mismanagement
Sunderland Football Club: A good idea in theory that doesn't quite work in practice.
This is the truth of the latest Premier League era at the Stadium of Light, an era that ended when yet another home defeat confirmed an inevitable relegation.
This is a fabulous, historic organisation with exceptional facilities and a vast and incredibly loyal fanbase. A football club that over the past decade has enjoyed financial opportunities never dreamt of during its long and distinguished history.
Sunderland AFC should leave a footprint wherever it goes, but it doesn't, because this is a football club that's messed it up, time and time again.
This season has been one long, depressing, dull disaster and it's been coming for years.
The David Moyes issue is the most high profile and the most pressing and we'll get to that in a moment. But first, some context.
The recent history of Sunderland is a tale of going round and round in expensive circles. A tale of lessons never learned and money wasted.
You know the drill: appoint manager who then buys lots of new players because he doesn't like the old players; manager wins relegation battle then buys more players; manager can't make it work the following season and is removed; new manager comes in and buys lots of even newer players because he thinks the ones the previous manager bought weren't much cop. Repeat to fade.
It's been a complete disaster as far as the club's finances are concerned and the consequences of living this life will be felt for years to come.
That's the obvious failure at the Stadium of Light. But there was a more subtle failure which was equally costly. Somewhere on this grotesque merry-go-round, Sunderland Football Club lost its identity.
It didn't know who or what it stood for anymore. The Black Cats spent years, and millions of pounds, trying to build a global profile, but neglected its core support. It became 'a Premier League club' rather than Sunderland Football Club.
This was missing the point by a million miles.
Now we come to the great irony of the Sunderland decline, because understanding these problems and trying to correct them has led to relegation and a different, even bigger, set of problems.
They realised they were doing it wrong and decided to change. No more revolving door for managers and a commitment to change the recruitment policy. No more concentrating on the wider profile at the expense of the core business: the football.
But they realised too late and picked the wrong man to instigate the changes. By the time David Moyes arrived on Wearside, the club was struggling badly with its finances. A cripplingly high wages to turnover ratio had put them right up against the ceiling of the financial fair play rules. There was little room for manoeuvre.
And so it came to pass that Sunderland, a team that had only just dodged the bullet last season, turned up for this season with a considerably weaker squad, which throughout the campaign was weakened even further by injuries.
So far, so hard luck story, but now we need to talk about David. On 21 August 2016, after Sunderland had lost their second game of the season against Middlesbrough, David Moyes told the press that, yes, Black Cats fans should expect another relegation battle. To repeat, this was after the second game of the season. He was running up the white flag and getting his excuses in first before the kids were back at school.
It's true that Moyes was perhaps misled over what to expect when he took the job, but this was hardly the way to energise the dressing room or the supporters.
The pattern has continued and at no point has this season been any fun and at no point has Moyes looked remotely like he was enjoying himself. But part of the great irony is that he was bullet proof. The desire to finally achieve stability meant that there was no appetite for changing another manager.
He hasn't done a good job by any measure whatsoever; Sunderland have been relegated with four games left to play. They haven't entertained and they've never really seemed to have an identity as a team or an obvious tactical blueprint.
The Black Cats had Jermain Defoe, still one of the best strikers of his generation and Jordan Pickford, the best young English goalkeeper in years, and they've still been relegated before the start of May. It's been awful.
The instinct now is to point the finger and apportion blame. But the truth is everyone over the past five years, maybe even the past ten years, is to blame. Too much money spent by too many managers and executives on too many average players. Too much faith placed in the wrong people, and this point leads us to the chairman and owner Ellis Short.
In some ways it's difficult to put too much blame on a man who's sunk untold millions of his personal fortune into the football club. But the story of Sunderland's failure in the Premier League is ultimately a story of too many bad decisions and Short was the man making those decisions for a lot of that time.
But this is football, this is life and this is not science fiction. You can't go back; Sam Allardyce did leave for England, you did appoint David Moyes and you have been relegated. So now Short, his chief executive, Martin Bain, and Sunderland Football Club have to start making better decisions.
The first big decision concerns the manager. Until now Moyes has received unconditional backing and, despite the car crash of this season, his CV has undoubted merits. But he looks weary and unhappy, he's lost the crowd and he needs to ask himself if he really wants to supervise the rebuild. And If he does want to stay then he needs to be told that he has to improve, because his performance this season has been as bad as any of his players.
Then the squad will have to be rebuilt. There will be sadness over the likely departures of Pickford and Defoe, but relief at the exit of many of the out of contract and loaned players. Money will have to be found and spent wisely. Sunderland have a good recent record at bouncing back from relegation, but the Championship is harder now than the last time they live there. It's not the end of the world, but Sunderland's world is going to change.
Maybe that's for the best. Newcastle United have shown the Championship can be fun, although they did it on a premier league budget. But for now it's goodbye. Sunderland have left the building. Regrets? They'll have a few, because what have Sunderland really achieved during a decade of top flight football? One cup final, a few good days and a lot of great escapes. It should've been more.