EVEN Peter Reid, a man who has defied the slings and arrows of footballing fortune to carve out a successful playing and management career, must be wondering why the fates are all suddenly conspiring against him.

While the "Reid Out" campaign is not one that has the backing of the entire Sunderland faithful, those fans who are calling for him to go are no longer a tiny, yet vocal, minority.

The promise of regular first-team football is not sufficient to persuade the likes of Robbie Keane, a fringe player at Leeds, to head up to Wearside.

Sunderland's inability to become major players in the transfer market - not through choice, it must be noted - sits uneasily against Juninho, Boateng, Viana and Bramble all making their way to their two North-East rivals.

And just when Reid needed his players to rally round the man who has always shown them complete loyalty, Kevin Kilbane's moment of crass stupidity in Gent prompted another barrage of negative publicity.

Bob Murray could not have given his manager any more backing, but at a club that prides itself on its relationship with its fans, chants against the chairman at Saturday's game will not have gone unheeded.

Perhaps Reid is now paying the price for not strengthening his squad sufficiently when they were doing well, producing back-to-back seventh-place finishes.

Yet who can criticise the signing of Kevin Phillips for £625,000? Or Gavin McCann for £500,000?

Such facts are of little interest to the anti-Reid brigade, who prefer to focus on the likes of Lilian Laslandes - who got more driving bans than he did Premiership goals during his aborted spell on Wearside - or Bernt Haas.

But Reid must have been wondering how fans would react when his team started to get heckled when they were in second place in the Premiership.

At the final whistle blew on a disappointing goalless draw with Bradford in January 2001, the players were jeered off. Again, the abuse didn't come from a majority at the Stadium of Light, but such actions underlined just how fickle the club's supporters can be.

Since then, Reid's relationship with fans has deteriorated alarmingly - culminating with Saturday's farce, including Kilbane's gesture and an irate fan forcing the game to be delayed.

Reid, a thoroughly decent man, truly does deserve better than this.

His comments, and those from Murray, at the end of last season amounted to an apology for Sunderland's dramatic decline since the turn of the year.

Since then, no doubt stung by barbs that he refuses to spend big, he has tried to bring Keane to Sunderland. A bid for Gudjohnsen is also understood to be imminent.

But if the team Reid sends into battle with Blackburn on August 17 contains a frontline of Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn, or Kevin Kyle, or any other current Sunderland player, is it really his fault?

At a time when the game is on the brink of imploding, should Reid bankrupt the club for the sake of bringing in a couple of players on inflated wages?

Of course not. But short of breaking the bank for Ronaldo, it is hard to see how he can win over his critics.

Sunderland fans deserve better than this. But so does Reid.

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