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It’s fair to say that I’m one of life’s cynics. I’m prone to look for the potential negatives in any given situation, wondering about people’s ulterior motives, naturally assuming that if something can go wrong, then it inevitably will.

Weirdly, my blind spot is Sunderland AFC. In spite of decades of emotional abuse inflicted on me by the club, my outlook is always sunny.

Take this season. Until last night, I was convinced that a side that has won six Premier League matches all season would be more than capable of triumphing in another four from its eight remaining games.

But the 5-1 capitulation at Tottenham caused the scales to fall from my eyes.

We’re down. Gone. It’s over. The patient is dead. There’s nothing more that can be done.

For months, I’ve believed that we could haul ourselves away from the bottom three, buoyed by a run of good form either side of Christmas and the League Cup campaign that led to a day out at Wembley. My positivity was merely delusion. The task was always going to be too immense and I’ve finally got my head around the fact that we’ve ballsed it up.

There isn’t one overriding factor behind our failure. In truth, the club has been sliding towards the Premier League trapdoor for the past eighteen months, using up what little luck it has ever been afforded.

The almost hallucinogenic appointment of Paolo Di Canio, slap bang in the middle of that slow, slide towards relegation, is probably the most significant of a string of bad decisions. The Italian seemed to live his life trapped in some kind of angry sugar rush, which is far from ideal when his job was to successfully motivate a bunch of millionaire man-children.

Throw in a catastrophic whirl in last summer’s transfer market, mix with Gus Poyet’s recent inability to find a winning tactical and team selection formula in order to dig out the wins that we needed, and it all adds up to one clanging calamity.

I see that now, but for so long, I was off my head on hope. A cock-eyed optimist, when cold, analytical reasoning was required.

So, now that it’s finally dawned on me that our longest top-flight spell since the 1950s is at an end, am I swathed in grief?

No! In fact can’t wait for the Championship!

I’ve watched the Black Cats win just 15 out of the last 69 league matches and the side is more or less made up of the same core group of underachievers that were here when Steve Bruce was shown the door in 2011.

It’s a dysfunctional relationship – we fans are sick of the sight of them all and they’re probably sick of us as well. It’s probably why only a few of the millionaire man-children bothered acknowledging the travelling supporters after last night’s battering (we know who you are).

Wholesale changes are needed, and nine of the clueless chancers will be exiting in the summer when their contracts expire, along with this season’s five loan players.

Those who remain will all have 40 per cent slashed from their weekly wage and Gus Poyet will have the luxury of building a young, hungry team that will attempt to bounce back into the Premier League, instead of being lumbered with the proven failures that are stinking out the Stadium of Light right now.

I should be angry that it’s come to this but like someone who has come through the various stages of grief, I’m in a state of serenity right now.

Chances are that we’ll see better football from Sunderland next season, more matches and more wins. The young foreign players we signed last summer who were all ill-equipped for the top flight have had a year at the club and will be nicely bedded in for a promotion push starting on August 9.

How can anything possibly go wrong?