Bournemouth loanee Lewis Grabban spent the first half of the season on loan at Sunderland, scoring 12 goals in 19 appearances.
Lewis Grabban was by no means the perfect striker during his six months at Sunderland, but at least he managed to consistently score goals.
The Bournemouth loanee spent the first half of the 2017/2018 campaign with the Black Cats and scored an impressive 12 goals in 19 league appearances. Having switched to Aston Villa on a new loan in January, he has scored a further four goals, placing him as the second top scorer in the Championship this season.
As it stands, having last featured for Sunderland in early January, Grabban remains the club’s top scorer this season, with double the number of the goals of the next highest scorer, Aiden McGeady.
Having left Sunderland on 5 January, the Tyne and Wear club had bags of time to bring in a suitable replacement, and failure to do so may have cost them their Championship status.
Admittedly, Sunderland looked pretty dire even with Grabban leading the line for them. However, with a striker who was scoring, at least the club had some chance of picking up points each game.
Without Grabban’s goals, Chris Coleman’s men have managed only 22 strikes in the league this season, three of which have been own goals from opposing players. Having barely managed a goal every other game, how did the club expect to have any chance of avoiding the drop?
Regardless of their position in the table, there is no doubt that a club the size of Sunderland could have brought in a new face for the second half of the season, whether that had been a striker from the Scottish league, a Premier League prospect on loan or even a League One striker.
To put it simply, the lack of urgency in terms of recruiting a replacement for Grabban was extremely poor management, and looks to be the defining factor in terms of Sunderland’s abysmal season.
Despite being a serious step up in quality, even former Sunderland man Anthony Stokes may have been a plausible option. Released from Hibernian earlier in the year, the Irishman was a free agent for a while before getting picked up by Greek side Apollon Smyrni.
The former Celtic star may not have set the Championship alight, but having scored 11 goals in the first half of the season, that is more than can be said for nearly the entire Sunderland squad combined.
Needless to say, Sunderland did not act quickly enough, and their fate feels almost certainly sealed with League One beckoning.
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