The former Manchester City man has gone a long time without tasting that winning feeling.
Sunderland’s Jack Rodwell looks dejected after the match
All is not well at the Stadium of Light at this moment in time, with Sunderland breaking records for all the wrong reasons.
Saturday’s last-gasp 1-0 defeat at West Ham – as well as keeping David Moyes’ side rock bottom of the Premier League – saw the Black Cats become the first team in 111 years to fail to win any of their opening nine top flight games in consecutive seasons.
Sunderland manager David Moyes looks dejected
It somehow gets even worse for midfielder Jack Rodwell. The 25-year-old has now made 32 starts for Sunderland and is yet to end any of them on the winning side.
This remarkable winless run is the longest of its kind in Premier League history, with Rodwell now three games clear of Darren Moore, who started 29 times without recording a victory for Derby in their dismal 2007/08 Premier League campaign.
To add salt into the Sunderland wound, bitter rivals Newcastle spent the weekend highlighting their fine recent winning run when former Black Cat Jack Colback appears for the Magpies.
Rodwell’s is a quite extraordinary record, and one which is particularly surprising given the esteem he was held in when he arrived at the club.
Jack Rodwell (L) in his Manchester City days
He had gone downhill through lack of game time at Manchester City, but had been impressive enough at Everton to persuade Roberto Mancini to spend a reported £12m to secure his services in 2012 and was regarded as one of England’s brightest prospects at that time.
Rodwell has also earned three England caps, though the last of these came in 2013 and on current form he is unlikely to find himself adding to that tally any time soon.
So what has gone wrong for the midfielder on Wearside?
Sunderland’s Jack Rodwell
The form of the team has not helped his cause. Since Rodwell arrived at the Stadium of Light in August 2014, Sunderland have won just 16 of their 85 league matches and have therefore been scrapping at the wrong end of the table for the duration of that time.
As ever with Rodwell, injuries have also played their part. The fact he has only made 32 starts across his two and a bit seasons to date highlight his struggles on that front, with the former Everton man an all too frequent visitor to the treatment table throughout a curtailed career to date.
Not all of his troubles can be blamed on those external factors, however, with Rodwell’s form in a Sunderland shirt also leaving a lot to be desired.
He made his reputation as a competitive, potentially destructive ball-winning midfielder but those qualities have not come to the fore in the north-east. Too often Rodwell has been a passenger in games, offering little in an attacking sense while also failing to stem the tide of opposition attacks.
Everton’s Ross Barkley in action with Sunderland’s Jack Rodwell
Admittedly, he was not brought to the club as a goalscorer, but a fierce shot and strong aerial ability means Sunderland supporters are within their rights to have expected more than the four league goals he has mustered in his Black Cats career to date.
Despite only being in his mid-twenties, Rodwell is one of the more established Premier League players in the Sunderland squad. He desperately needs to rediscover some of the quality that made him such a sought-after player in years gone by if he is to put an end to this particularly startling record and help the Wearside outfit climb the table.
All is not lost for Rodwell, however; though such records attract headlines, recent history suggests it may yet be too soon for Sunderland supporters to completely write off the former Manchester City man.
After all, between 2007 and 2009 a promising prospect started 22 matches for Tottenham before finding himself on the victorious side, a run which attracted ridicule and saw the player very nearly shipped out on loan. His name? Gareth Bale.
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