It’s no wonder Sunderland have sucked under ‘Energy Vampire’ David Moyes – Mirror.co.uk

From Psycho to Calamity James, certain football nicknames draw an instant nod of recognition.

So take a bow the former Sunderland player who christened David Moyes The Energy Vampire, as anyone who studied the Scots funereal words and body language this season would agree that moniker captures him to a tee.

Theres a fine line in football between keeping wild optimism in check and suffocating all hope.

Players have to go into a season believing theyll do well, because that is the least their supporters demand in exchange for signing up for nine months of nerve-shredding anxiety.

So when Moyes said last August that any Sunderland fans fearing a relegation battle would probably be right, the suicidal die was cast.

The season was only two games old at the time and the transfer window still open, yet he came out with a quote that would deter any potential signings and create a defeatist mindset among his own fans and staff.

And when the winter window came along, the vampire kept sucking.

Id be kidding you on if I said the players we are going to bring in in January are going to massively make a big difference, he said.

As uplifting speeches went, it was down there with a Death Row inmate being told he could have extra chips with his final meal.

In February, after taking four points from two games, Moyes played down any hope of it inspiring a run to safety by saying: Maybe were a club that doesnt find it easy when the expectation rises. Maybe were better when were backs to the wall a little bit.

Or maybe he was talking about himself.

When Everton visited the Stadium of Light in September, he boasted in his programme notes how hed lifted his old club from relegation candidates to regular top-eight finishers before firing a warning shot at Evertonians excited at having a new owner with money.

With that comes increased expectation, he wrote.

In other words, a club needs to know its place and not go believing its something it is not by embracing that delusional emotion called expectation.

Which makes you realise how impossible his job was at Manchester United, where expectations are off the scale every season.

United's current manager, Jose Mourinho, often plays the mission impossible card (hes doing it right now, over their fixtures) but its done to protect his own players and lull opponents into believing his team are struggling when theyre not.

The psychological warfare rarely backfires.

Whatever happens now for Moyes, he has to learn that you cant suck the life out of clubs with doom-laden prophecies that inevitably become self-fulfilling.

Defeatism spreads like a rash through football clubs, especially when it comes from the man paid handsomely to bring victories.

His current hesitation in committing to seeing out his Sunderland contract only confirms the suspicions that last summer he thought he was doing the club a big favour by joining. And his strategy was to play down expectations, just as he did at Everton, in the hope he would be hailed a managerial genius if he over-achieved.

Despite lamentable ownership decisions, and a lack of cash, Sunderland is still a big club, and Moyes should think twice about walking away.

Not least because potential employers might see his past years work as a classic example of how to wreck confidence at a struggling club, and apply an updated twist to The Energy Vampires earlier nickname:

The Unlikely To Be Chosen One.

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It's no wonder Sunderland have sucked under 'Energy Vampire' David Moyes - Mirror.co.uk