Those weren't the only alarming statistics to come out of this fixture. The Southampton clash was watched by 25,667. An excellent Championship gate but a thousand or so less than witnessed Niall Quinn's first home match in charge back in August. And a whopping 10,000 fewer than turned up for Keane's home debut against Leicester City in September. After two wins and a draw in his first three games in charge, the neophyte manager has found the going a little tougher. Before yesterday's encounter with Colchester, Sunderland were 19th in the table, had won just twice in the previous seven, and both times against teams below them.

With one bookmaker quoting him at 14-1 to get the sack, Keane heads to Wolves for the televised showdown with his old nemesis/new best friend Mick McCarthy next Friday night, perhaps realising this management lark is a tad more difficult than it looked. Not yet three months in, he has used 23 different players, never named the same team twice, and already gone through four different captains. Dean Whitehead asked to be relieved of the armband because of the added pressure while Dwight Yorke confessed being captain didn't interest him very much at all. Although regular skipper Stephen Caldwell has now returned from injury to solve that problem, Keane appears no nearer knowing his best XI.

He has complained about the dressing-room being too quiet and the players being too pally off the field to bark at each other on it. A familiar refrain from his latter-day United career. He's had a couple of clear-the-air meetings and even togged out for training in order to better convey the type of urgency and intensity required of them in practice. The squad have labelled his style of bollocking "the tumble dryer" in deference to his former mentor at Old Trafford. Except Keane's version of the Ferguson treatment hasn't quite had the same effect on his charges.

Witness their apathetic response to being publicly lambasted by him after a defeat by Preston North End last month.

With his side four goals down after less than an hour, Keane spent much of that match leaning impassively against the dug-out, taking it all in. Afterwards, he told reporters the party was over, certain individuals had shown they weren't up to what he was demanding and had no future at the club. Evincing the sort of ruthlessness many would have expected from him, five of the starting XI were dropped for the trip to Stoke the following Tuesday. The only problem is his dressing-down didn't exactly work wonders. Stoke beat them 2-1 and they've lost more games than they've won since his tirade. Of the changes he wrought, replacing teenage goalkeeper Ben Alnwick with the more experienced Ward has been his lone inspired decision.

"It's getting the balance right, we have a decent-sized squad and we have a good squad but possibly we have too many of the same type of player, " said Keane this week. "We've got a lot of good ball players but not many running beyond the ball with outstanding pace. We play a lot of nice football without getting behind teams. That is something I'm looking at but it's not easy to get the players you want. We want to get quality players in, players who are going to improve what we already have. But it's easier said than done."

In the past couple of weeks, the Cork man has travelled to Scotland twice to run the rule over Falkirk's Anthony Stokes and while he's expected to be busy in the forthcoming transfer window, his previous deadline-day shopping spree yielded mixed results.

Yorke has added undoubted quality even in a withdrawn midfield role but Ross Wallace lessened his otherwise impressive impact by being cheaply dismissed twice. Stan Varga and Graham Kavanagh have been injury-prone, David Connolly has yet to score a goal, and in a reflection perhaps of his falling status, Liam Miller was an unused sub for the last six matches.

With typical insouciance, Keane didn't buy into the early hype surrounding his team's initial burst of progress and has refused to cite an admittedly terrible run of injuries to key figures as an excuse for their more recent inconsistency.

In a tight division, Sunderland were six points off a play-off spot yesterday morning but ominously just four clear of the relegation places too.

Their cause hasn't been helped either by the fact that since the appointment of such a high-profile manager, other teams treat matches against them as big occasions and are inclined to raise their own games accordingly.

Shortly after he arrived, Keane brought in the former Olympic high jumper turned motivational speaker Steve Smith to talk to the players. A typically innovative move by a manager who transformed himself from hellraiser to hot yoga enthusiast in the course of his own career, the theme of Smith's speech was 'Raising the Bar'. It remains something Keane's Sunderland has yet to do.