Sunderland are set to leave manager Gus Poyet from his duties after witnessing the team crumbled to yet another horrible defeat in the Premier League.

A 4-0 loss against Aston Villa means that the club are just one point above the relegation zone with nine matches remaining in the season. Interestingly, Sunderland brought inPoyet to keep the club in the division last season. Despite the odds being heavily stacked against him,Poyet managed to keep Sunderland in the Premier League. It looks like he may not be present at the club to see out the campaign.

The club has not managed a league victory only in the last few weeks, but the situation has become precarious because of the teams below them picking up points of late. The likes of Aston Villa and Hull City have moved clear of the relegation zone while Burnley have closed the gap with a shock 1-0 win over Manchester City. To add insult to injury, Sunderland started with only 10 players after Sebastian Larsson failed to appear after the second half break. He did so only after three minutes had passed and the professionalism of the players has been questioned.

Opposition manager Tim Sherwood was confident that Poyet would bounce back from this disappointing defeat.“I’m extremely disappointed. I was not expecting this to happen.I don’t want to go into details, I have to analyse things very carefully. I have no explanation for what happened in the first half. If I was a fan, I would have done the same. They were quite right. It was not acceptable. Seb is one of the best professionals we have. He had a massive cut in his leg and they couldn’t stitch it quickly enough. We asked the referee to delay the restart but we waited for Seb,” said Poyet.