Nottingham Forest 2 Sunderland 0: Last summer Sunderland became embroiled in a dispute with UEFA representatives when a couple of their players failed to produce urine samples for a mandatory drugs test following a pre-season friendly in Belgium.
The fuss blew over fairly quickly with the Wearside club being absolved of blame after it was accepted it was all a misunderstanding attributable to the language barrier. Yet watching relegated Sunderland sleepwalk towards their 16th successive League defeat - and their 10th straight reverse under Mick McCarthy's management - one wondered if they might test positive for Mogadon.
Two of McCarthy's midfielders, Sean Thornton and Jeff Whitley, were dropped after oversleeping at the team hotel on Saturday morning and several of those who made it on to the City Ground pitch looked almost as dozy, no one more so than Stephen Wright, the £3 million former Liverpool right-back.
Wright was culpable when Marlon Harewood connected with a characteristically clever pass down the left from the excellent Andy Reid and, having burnt off Joachim Bjorklund, rounded Mart Poom before rolling Forest's first goal home.
Four minutes before the interval neither Wright nor the rest of the visiting defence had any answer to Reid's in-swinging near-post corner from which the on-rushing Matthieu Louis-Jean headed Forest's second.
Having frozen out Kevin Phillips and Tore Andre Flo in the hope they will take the hint and ease a debilitating wage bill by departing, McCarthy fielded Kevin Kyle and Michael Proctor in an attack augmented by a floating John Oster.
With Forest patently missing the suspended Michael Dawson, their best defender, and Des Walker beginning to look his age, 38, both principal strikers wasted a couple of excellent chances.
Forest were in a different class. Only play-off defeat denied them a place at the top table last spring and, prompted by Reid's adroit deliveries, the exhilarating attacking pace of Harewood and David Johnson should ensure Paul Hart's refreshingly improvisational side are heavily involved in another promotion push.
By contrast Sunderland need to avoid losing their next two First Division games or they will equal the worst sequence of league defeats in the English game - an ignominious, 104-year-old record, held by Darwen.
"So what if we get the record?" exclaimed McCarthy. " We might go on to win our next 10 games." But how? "We need to get back to the sort of team that got Sunderland into the Premiership in the first place. They could play but they could also kick, bollock and bite and be scruffy and horrible. They were a team people could be proud of." That is more than can be said of the present lot.- Guardian Service
NOTTM FOREST: Ward, Louis-Jean, Thompson, Walker, Oyen, Jess, Stewart, Gunnarsson (Sonner 60), Reid, Johnson, Harewood. Subs Not Used: Roche, Morgan, Williams, Westcarr. Goals: Harewood 19, Louis-Jean 41.
Sunderland: Poom, Wright, Babb, Bjorklund, McCartney, Oster (Butler 63), McAteer, Thirlwell, Kilbane, Proctor (Stewart 60), Kyle.Subs Not Used: Clark, Ingham, Williams. Booked: Babb, Thirlwell, Bjorklund.
Referee: M Ryan (Lancashire).
