By Roger Domeneghetti

WHEN I sat down to write this I was tempted to cut and paste the season review I wrote for Sunderland last year. For that matter I could have picked the review from the year before. Or the one before that.

This is the fourth season in a row that Sunderland have started with one manager in situ only to nosedive towards the relegation zone and end it with another man in the dugout.

Gus Poyet was the fall guy this season. Having guided Sunderland to a great escape last year, he pledged at the start of the campaign that there would be “no more miracles, no more suffering.”

He was right about the miracles but it didn’t take long for the suffering to kick, with the Black Cats losing 8-0 at Southampton in October.

The team rallied after that, posting one of their now regular wins over Newcastle to climb to 14th. By that point they had drawn 10 of their 17 games and the signing of Jermain Defoe seemed to promise the goals that would convert some of those stalemates to wins.

It wasn’t to be and the team won just once in the next 12, culminating in a 4-0 capitulation at home to Aston Villa. The fans made their feelings clear, exiting en masse before the final whistle, and Poyet was not far behind through the exit door.

Dick Advocaat, a seemingly left-field appointment, passed him on the way in. The Dutchman injected an element of calm and organisation, which yielded 12 points (including another three against Newcastle) from the final nine games, thereby ensuring survival.

He has the air of someone who will provide an experienced hand at the tiller, steering the club away from the choppy waters of perennial relegation battles and towards the relative calm of mid-table.

After a period of indecision Advocaat agreed to stay on. But as he’s approaching 68 that will be for just one more season, which means owner Ellis Short will have another huge decision to make next year. It’ll arguably be the most important one he's made since he took over the club in 2008.

Yes, the managers are culpable for the performances on the pitch but eventually you have to look beyond them and ask how Short and his board have got it so wrong, so often in such a short space of time?

Managerial instability is the root cause of all of Sunderland’s problems. The last manager to survive a full season in the Stadium of Light was Steve Bruce in 2010-11.

The last manager to survive more than two full seasons in charge? Well you have to go back nearly 15 years to Peter Reid to answer that one.

While the extension of Advocaat’s tenure has been widely welcomed, it only serves to keep the managerial merry-go-round spinning when Sunderland desperately need to get off.