Dutchman suffered a losing start as boss as his side went down 1-0 to West Ham at Upton Park after Diafra Sakho scored a late winner
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Relegation battles are never beauty pageants in swimsuits or cocktail dresses – and the beaten manager made no excuse for playing devil’s Advocaat.
If are going to stay up, is prepared to win ugly and “play very negative if the need is there”.
Forget about Holland being the spiritual home of Total Football. There will be no Rembrandt portraits or Dutch masters at the Stadium of Light.
If Dick Dastardly can help it, the Wear-Tyne derby against Newcastle on Easter Sunday can be uglier than a mud fence as long as the Black Cats get the cream.
According to number crunchers, the meeting of Mackems and Magpies after the international break is the biggest game in Sunderland’s history because of the £5billion TV deal that kicks in next year. In pictures - West Ham 1-0 Sunderland
It remains to be seen whether the accountants are proved right, but on the evidence of a cold, grey evening in east London, it could certainly be the ugliest.
Sunderland had served up eight goalless draws under Advocaat’s predecessor Gus Poyet, and were two minutes from a ninth when in this monument to mediocrity.
Poyet enjoyed an enviable 100 per cent record against Newcastle as Sunderland manager.
Advocaat would give the Black Cats’ whiskers to mark his home debut with more of the same.
Just do not expect him to paint any pretty pictures where paintballing is the more expedient option.
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Advocaat said: “The only important thing in the final eight games is winning – the way we do that isn’t important.
“If we win games very ugly, I like that. How do we win ugly? Play very negative if the need is there.
“But in derby games, playing at home gives you a big advantage. So if we can do what we did against West Ham – tactically we did well, although we didn’t create a lot of chances – with our fans behind us, we can do even better. I don’t agree the derby is one of the biggest games in our history.
“For us, every game is important and we need the points. Newcastle is only the most important game because it’s the next one.
“But I have seen the intensity of the game here – if you’re involved eight or 10 times in Rangers against Celtic, you know about it.”
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Week to forget: Wes Brown limps off against the Hammers
Advocaat will honour Poyet’s promise of two days off for players not called up for international duty this week before settling on the personnel and pattern required for the ear-splitting din of the derby.
Centre-back limped off injured after just 11 minutes at Upton Park – his second bad result in a week after his clan lost 548-0 on ITV’s All Star Family Fortunes.
We asked 100 people if Sunderland will stay up if they are mugged at home by the Mags. Our survey said: “Uh-oh.”
Hammers midfielder conceded the East Enders were fortunate when substitute Nene flattened Seb Larsson in the build-up to Sakho’s winner.
He admitted: “We got a bit of luck but we were due a little bit. You can’t play brilliant every week and hopefully that will kick us on to another winning streak.
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Jumping for joy: Stewart Downing and James Collins celebrate
“There are a lot of winnable games coming up, so Europe is still a possibility. Tenth place for us is not good enough, we want to aim higher and we’ve the players to do it.”
West Ham boss batted away vice-chairman Karren Brady’s barb that the Hammers had been “underachieving” since Christmas after nicking only their third win in 17 games since Boxing Day.
Nobody does winning ugly better than Big Sam, who said: “Everybody’s expectation grows – mine did – but we’ve only lost to Crystal Palace and Everton below us. That’s how good this season has been.
"We’ve known we wouldn’t be relegated since Christmas, but were talking about finishing in the top four even though we knew it wouldn’t happen.”
