Following Sunderland's 8-0 defeat at the hands of Southampton at the weekend Sunderland goalkeeper Vito Mannone suggested in the press and apparently in the dressing room that the players should take responsibility for the unacceptable performance and apologise by way of refunding the supporters who travelled to Southampton their ticket and travel expenses. Club captain John Oshea later announced that all 2600 fans who travelled will be refunded their £24 ticket price (the club had already subsidised each ticket by ten pounds for travelling supporters) they however would not be refunding any travel expenses for the fans who had made the 630 mile round trip, some train prices were as much as £152. O'Shea also apologised to the supporters saying "we win and lose as a team, players, staff and fans, however we wanted to acknowledge and thank the supporters who had travelled such a long way and despite everything, stayed with us until the final whistle.
This is a nice gesture by the Sunderland players and a decent effort as far as an apology goes. Everybody who has played football has had a bad day, sometimes no matter what you do or how hard you try nothing goes the way you want, every touch is to heavy, every shot balloons over the bar, nothing clicks. for Sunderland everybody had a bad bad day together. Southampton are no mugs in fact they are a very good team and were favourites to win the game in any case, most would have expected a comfortable win. But, everybody who has played or watched football will also tell you that when you are having an off day and things just aren't working for you what you do, the very least that is expected, is that you put the work in, in my opinion Sunderland didn't do this, they seemed to give up as a team and as individuals, all of them, without exception and this isn't acceptable, not when you are playing in the park, you don't let your mates down and certainly not when you're a professional not only do you let your colleagues down but also the supporters the people who pay your wages. It's not just my opinion that the Sunderland players stopped trying, the local paper, The Sunderland Echo, gave Fletcher the Man of the Match a mark of only five with two players suffering the embarrassment of gaining only two. The captain John Oshea said they were guilty of not putting their foot in.
Despite this should the players pay out of their own pockets, I'm certain that not one of them intended to let people down, I'm certain they wanted to do well, should they pay financially for not playing well, if so where is the line, if they had lost 10-0 do you pay the travelling expenses or is 6-0 acceptable and you don't pay anything, should Man Utd players have stumped up going down 4-0 to supposedly inferior opposition after all their fans suffered expense and saw an embarrassingly poor performance from probably better payed players than Sunderland have. What happens if only one player has a poor performance do then they cough up on their own, their would be several players filing for bankruptcy. I'm playing devil's advocate a little but you see my point. On this occasion it's was the idea of the Sunderland players and I understand that they all agreed that they had some responsibility and that they wanted to do something to apologise to their supporters who had made one of the longest journeys in the league and this is what they decided to do, a decent gesture and one that I am sure is appreciated but I'm absolutely certain that supporters would rather the players put things right on the pitch and make sure in future that they put in the effort that is expected.
@lfclumo
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