Sunderland’s latest struggles are years in the making.

It took a while, longer than Leicester City, longer than Norwich City, but eventually Sunderland fell behind on Saturday for the third match in a row against Swansea. Dick Advocaat could only sigh as he cut a forlorn figure on the touchline.

The home support, their loyalty tested to breaking point had every right to feel déjà vu sweep over them as Bafetimbi Gomis wheeled away to celebrate; another relegation battle looming. An exact start point for the problems is difficult to isolate, but the dismissal of Martin O’Neill was certainly the first crack.

Owner Ellis Short had trusted O’Neill not only with his team but also his cheque book. The American’s first managerial appointment, O’Neill had a joke for every difficult press conference and diffused the tension with a clever line or a quip. The Irishman’s first summer in charge saw over £30million spent on transfers and nine first-team players pose with scarves at the Academy of Light.

Unfortunately he would be gone by March. Of his failings, the lack of discipline was seen as one of the biggest and in his place arrived Paolo Di Canio. The next revolution could begin. Mayonnaise and coke were banned, Adam Johnson looked lean and the club turned the dial in the opposite direction in the transfer market.

Gone were marquee signings like Johnson. O’Neill had rarely shopped outside of the UK and so in came a director of football, Roberto De Fanti. The ideas did not mesh well. Of the fourteen new recruits few were of the quality needed to improve a side that had barely survived relegation. “‘We had to build a team from scratch,” De Fanti told the Guardian earlier this year. Overpaying in the domestic market for players like Steven Fletcher and Danny Graham was now cast alongside a parsimony in the central European market as eight new nationalities arrived at the club.

Unsurprisingly such wholesale changes meant another season of struggling, with Di Canio admitting there was a language barrier on the training pitch. Once again the manager left and Gustavo Poyet arrived. There had been too much discipline at the club and more experience was required in the Sunderland manager. The next revolution could begin.

In came a replacement for De Fanti, Lee Congerton, a man that was previously of Chelsea and Hamburg. His record in Germany is best described as hit and miss and during Poyet’s time at the club their relationship was tense. The Uruguayan wanted players he knew. He signed Brighton pair Liam Bridcutt & Will Buckley and speak openly how he wanted a compatriot in the squad. Congerton was not convinced and by this point the squad was an amalgamation of the previous regimes.

Each failed revolution had left its mark on the starting eleven with a variety of players none of whom were suited to the same tactical style. De Fanti’s European players were eager to build the play; O’Neill’s British based players were more suited to a direct style. Meanwhile Poyet’s players were largely just not good enough. The former Brighton boss attempted to reinvent a number of the players into something they were not - Lee Cattermole cast as deep-lying playmaker.

It was a jarring an uneasy watch. There was simply no harmony throughout the club. Last summer Congerton signed an attacking full-back in Patrick Van Aanholt without seemingly any consideration for the rest of the defence. Just like those before him there was little thought given to the wider picture and how these players would all intermix together. Van Aanholt would drive forward and leave space in behind, isolating the two centre-backs, both of whom are bereft of pace.

Poyet spoke of the issues at the weekend while working for TV2 in Norway. “They are trying to play but they are not having the ability to play,” he bluntly stated. “It is like you are in between [two styles]. Listen it happened to me so I know how Dick Advocaat is feeling.”

“They are taking too many risks. I hope one day people will wake up in there and think, Martin O’Neill was right, Paolo Di Canio was right, Gus Poyet was right, Dick Advocaat was right, we need to change something.”

The lack of harmony between Congerton and Poyet was typified by a story Poyet told in which he was forced to use winger Charis Mavrias at right-back due to Billy Jones suffering an injury. “He had no chance to play right back,” Poyet said. “He was a proper winger with no idea of defending. Is that how to prepare for the Premier League?”

When Advocaat arrived, they required a third escape act under a fourth manager in four seasons. By then they were specialists in precipice avoidance, but one wrong move and the consequences would be catastrophic. As Advocaat succeeded in his mission, he shed a tear, perhaps because he knew of his intention to retire not long after.

Owner Ellis Short was accused of lacking ambition by Michael Gray last week, criticising his lack of investment. In reality they have spent £100million in five years - £40 million more than Swansea.

Rather, Short’s greatest crime has been to trust the football decisions with the wrong people. Sunderland’s owner has instigated and scrapped the club’s ethos quickly and consistently, failing to do due diligence on those he has hired to see if they mesh well together. Lurching from revolution to revolution. It has built up a log jam of mediocrity in the playing squad for which he will most certainly have to take some of the blame.

Of comfort to Sunderland fans will be the fact this summer saw a marked improvement. Jeremain Lens was a shrewd opportunistic signing. Yann M’vila was the upgrade the central midfield had needed for some three seasons. Yet they were just two of arguably half-a-dozen needed to overhaul a squad lacking in quality, with Advocaat himself reiterating this week that the club need at least three new additions before the transfer window ends.

The Dutch tactician will be 68 by the end of the current campaign and is currently on a one-year-deal. His future, like Sunderland’s is uncertain leading to the ugly problem rearing its head once again. Sunderland are a club in need of continuity ideologically. A manager with the faith of the owner to layout a long-term project and signings that are not simply ‘good’ but good for that project.

A sizeable task, it is one Short must begin to implement now or he will face yet more expensive battles to stave off the threat of relegation, a fate that could easily cripple Sunderland into a frightening state of a football club.