Quinn rages at 'scandalous' performance

"Tactics don't get a manager the sack," said Sir Bobby Robson, finishing a recent lecture to the Newcastle press corps on the basics of football. "Players do."

The men whom Peter Reid had paid £22m to take to Wearside did all they could to ensure their manager will be fired within a week. The Sunderland manager, nursing a side which has won four games in the calendar year, selected a defensive formation, filled his team with players whom he said would have "the balls for the job" and before kick-off gave an impassioned 20-minute speech on the importance of the Tyne-Wear derby to the fabric of the North-east.

Their response was to concede a goal after 83 seconds and produce one of the most shockingly inept performances in Reid's seven years on Wearside. Now his writ may have fewer than seven days to run.

Reid is fond of saying that no manager is more than three bad results away from the sack and should Sunderland lose to Aston Villa on Saturday he will have had four. He is likely to find the Stadium of Light, which has not seen a home victory in almost six months, a more hostile environment than St James' Park ever was. There will be perhaps 15,000 empty seats and maybe half of those who turn up will be hoping for Sunderland to lose to hasten the exit of a man who transformed their club but whom many have come to loathe.

Off the field Sunderland are one of the Premiership's few solvent clubs but on the pitch they have been bankrupt for months and in this present state are close to unmanageable. It should have embarrassed his team-mates that even at 35 Niall Quinn looked the only one wearing a red-and-white shirt to realise the importance of showing their supporters peering down from the top of the giddying Milburn Stand that at least they were prepared to fight it out. Instead, there was surrender, empty and abject, which left the Irishman, for whom the adjective "genial" might have been invented, as angry as he has ever been.

"I hope the players read about how poor they were because they have let Peter Reid down," he said. "A lot of people are here because of Peter Reid and they owe their careers to him. Desire is our blood, our oxygen, it's everything this football club expects and every successful Sunderland team has had it.

"Now it has slipped, it has evaporated. As soon as we let a goal in, our bottle's gone. Against Fulham, we packed up our tools after 30 minutes and did not get going again. Sunderland losing a derby is a disaster but knowing that we did not give our all for Peter Reid is scandalous."

Quinn has known Reid since their days at Manchester City and he had never heard him attack his own players in the manner he did on Saturday. "I can't protect my players any more," he said with weary anger. "They have to take responsibility. They were too easy to roll over," Reid told the press conference. What he said in the dressing-room, if he could bring himself to speak, can be imagined.

It would have stung more that Newcastle performed indifferently. Laurent Robert and Nolberto Solano, whose absence in Kiev on Wednesday night had been widely criticised, gave desultory displays while Kieron Dyer endured a dreadful first half. Andy Griffin, whom his captain, Alan Shearer, thought the best player on the pitch, toughened up what has sometimes been a paper-thin defence, although the nearest Tore Andre Flo came to piercing it was when he charged down Shay Given's clearance, forcing the Newcastle keeper to dash frantically back to stop the ball rolling in.

When at Ibrox, Flo was criticised by the Rangers faithful for performing insipidly in the Glasgow derbies and the pattern does not appear to have changed now that the Norwegian has secured a lucrative move to Wearside.

Despite Newcastle's frailties, it was barely a contest. Once Craig Bellamy had slipped through what purported to be a back four and slid his shot past Thomas Sorensen and Shearer had hammered a free-kick through an alleged wall, the contest was over – since Sunderland would from then have had to score as many goals in 51 minutes as they had done in the previous 579 merely to earn a point. Should they fail to find the net on Saturday, it will surely be all over for Reid; and his counterpart at Newcastle could only sympathise.

"I won two championships with PSV Eindhoven," said Robson, "and they moved me out to bring another coach in. I lost my job in Barcelona because I'd only won the Spanish Cup, the Cup-Winners' Cup, the Super Cup and finished second in the league. A terrible season; I was sacked."

In this context, Reid's removal does not sound like such an injustice.

Goals: Bellamy (2) 1-0; Shearer (39) 2-0.

Newcastle United (4-4-2): Given 6, Griffin 8, Dabizas 5, O'Brien 6, Hughes 6, Solano 4 (Jenas, 63 5), Dyer 5, Speed 6, Robert 4 (Viana, 77), Bellamy 7 (Ameobi, 86), Shearer 7. Substitutes not used: Harper (gk), Bramble.

Sunderland (4-5-1): Sorensen 6, Wright 5, Babb 7, Bjorklund 5 (Williams, 71 6), Gray 5, Piper 4, McAteer 4 (Quinn, 46 7), Reyna 4, McCann 3, Kilbane 4, Flo 3 (Stewart, 86). Substitutes not used: Myhre (gk), Bellion.

Referee: M Riley (Leeds) 6.

Bookings: Newcastle: Bellamy. Sunderland: Wright.

Man of the match: Griffin.

Attendance: 52,181.