By Gordon Sharrock: Sunderland 3, Bolton Wanderers 1. IF Wanderers were offered the guarantee of a play-off place today, they'd be well advised to take it. The players are going through a crisis of confidence, the manager admits his team has lost its way, fans have lost faith and there is a pack of chasing clubs snapping at their heels.

Unless they can check the slide that has produced relegation form just when they needed a promotion push, the remaining nine games could become a liability rather than a Premiership lifeline.

Having been put firmly in their place by the Champions elect - the team they genuinely thought they could catch a month ago - they have reached the point where they are more likely to drop out of the top six than make the top two.

No-one is waving the white flag and Mark Fish summed up the lingering hope that things will come good by refusing to rule out automatic promotion until it's mathematically impossible.

"I'm going to keep saying we can get that second spot," the South African centre-back said defiantly today. "I'm sure everyone involved doesn't want the extra three weeks."

If only they could be so sure the safety net was in place . . !

Because a side that has conceded three goals in five of their last six matches is only going in one direction and the question in everyone's mind now is, how far can they fall?

Equally concerning is that a side that has promotion aspirations, having previously raced into pole position, can produce a performance so lacking in 'bottle' when it really mattered.

Saturday was the acid test; the chance for Wanderers to send a message to the rest of the chasing pack that they've come through their bad spell and are still a force to be reckoned with. They didn't just fail the examination by finishing second best in every facet of the game, they picked up another serious blow to their self-belief while Ipswich and Bradford City had good away wins and Birmingham picked up a point on their travels.

Check the statistics: after settling sweetly into Sunderland's slip-stream with a 15-match unbeaten run, which featured nine clean sheets, they have taken just six points from a possible 21, dropped from second spot to fifth and are now 21 points behind the leaders.

After the game at Birmingham a month ago, Colin Todd summed up the mood in his dressing room when he looked forward to his first visit to the Stadium of Light and suggested Peter Reid's runaways could still be caught.

Such confidence, based on the concensus of the players themselves, was justified at the time but up on Wearside it made them all the more determined to show who really is boss of the Nationwide League.

Kevin Phillips, scorer of the first Sunderland goal, explained: "The gaffer came in to us before the game and apparently Mr Todd's been saying in the local Evening News that we can still be caught. "We didn't have to worry about Bolton because we were 16 or 17 points ahead of them. They were no worry to us at all but, maybe because of what was said, the lads were really up for it."

Motivation and determination was, indeed, the key.

Sunderland were delighted with their performance. It was, according to home sources, one of their best and featured variety, a cutting edge provided by wingers Nicky Summerbee and Allan Johnston and the customary threat of the little and large double act of Phillips and Niall Quinn.

But the game was won and lost by one team, passionate and forceful, imposing its will over another, tentative and bordering on the dispirited.

It would be churlish and ridiculous to suggest Sunderland are not a good side and worthy not only of the title but even capable of eclipsing Wanderers' 96-97 feat of 98 points and 100 goals. But Saturday's would certainly have been a better contest and a more entertaining spectacle if Todd's players had shown anything like the form they were in a month ago when they were solid in defence, organised in midfield and sure of themselves up front. They simply weren't allowed to and, for all the glory that goes to the goalscorers and providers, there's no getting away from the fact that in their down-to-earth midfield driving force, Kevin Ball, Sunderland possess a captain in the image of their manager - knowledgable, crafty, combative and intimidating to opponents who don't have the stomach for the fight.

Todd, who had hoped for so much better on his first visit to the new home of the club where his career began, acknowledged that his players simply didn't have the appetite.

"The first 45 minutes was not acceptable," he said, more in disappointment than rage. "We didn't have any commitment, any desire, any passion to put them under pressure when they had the ball. When we had the ball, we didn't pass it and that is not us. The game was lost in the first half because we never took the initiative away from them." The plan was to fight fire with fire. But while Sunderland were imposing themselves - Lee Clark tested Jussi Jaaskelainen and Ball had a 'goal' disallowed for a marginal offside decision before Phillips and Allan Johnston raised the roof with two goals in five minutes - Wanderers didn't get a single effort on target.

They lost all the crucial head-to-heads and all the pre-match billing of the 'clash of the heavyweights' seemed laughable on reflection.

Yet Wanderers still left the magnificent Stadium of Light having been comprehensively outplayed yet wondering what might have been. Per Frandsen had given them hope four minutes into the second half with a stunning drive that left fellow Dane, Thomas Sorensen, rooted and Eidur Gudjohnsen had made another sensational impact in the last 15 minutes.

The young Icelander set up one chance for Dean Holdsworth and forced Sorensen to make an impressive save that looked all the more important when the Golden Boy rattled the bar two minutes later with a 20-yarder! Sunderland, who created a post-war club record of 10 consecutive home wins in front of a stadium record attendance to mark Reid's 100th home game in charge, certainly didn't look unbeatable as they conceded only their second goal in nine games and survived that late flourish.

But they'll take all the handouts they can get, like the gift when Jaaskelainen got himself in a tangle and allowed Johnston's speculative shot to find its way into the centre of the goal, just after Frandsen had put the game in the balance for the first time and only time.

More galling was the fact that what turned out to be the decisive blow came on a counter attack after Claus Jensen had threatened at the other end.

Jaaskelainen is suffering more than most on the confidence scale but Fish believes the keeper is not the only one who needs a shot of self-belief.

"We need to lift each other," he acknowldged. "It's becoming a bit of a fear factor. We are going into games thinking we are going to concede goals. We had a bit of fear in the first half when we gave Sunderland too much respect and allowed them to dictate terms.

"Now it's important we lift each other and get back to the way we were playing when we had that good run.

"We need to make life easier for ourselves. At the moment we are making it difficult for ourselves and putting more grey hairs on the gaffer's head."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.