A miserable pre-season has seen a surge of bets on the Black Cats recording back-to-back relegations.
Sunderland fans have not had a great time of it over the past few years, and their fortunes don’t look to be changing any time soon.
The Black Cats were on the end of a 5-0 drubbing by Celtic on Saturday. Add this to two single goal victories against League 1 and National League opposition, a 0-0 draw to Scunthorpe and a 3-0 loss to St Johnstone, and you can see why their fans lack any real hope going into the new season.
Punters also share this negativity and since Sunderland’s first pre-season friendly kicked off, they have accounted for 19.5% of all bets on the Championship relegation market. This number is even higher when you look at bets since their shambolic performance against Celtic, where they account for nearly a quarter (23%) of all bets on the market and a nearly half of the money staked (40.3%).
When you put these figures into perspective, last July they received 17.5% of bets on the Premier League relegation market, which suggests Oddschecker users are even less optimistic about Sunderland’s chances of staying in the Championship than they were about their chances of staying in the top flight last term.
Available at 20/1 to be relegated earlier this month, one bookie has even gone as far as cutting their odds to as short as 5/1. 14/1 is the best (and general) price currently on offer, which would almost certainly shorten should Sunderland suffer another poor result at the hands of Derby in their season opener on Friday night.
