Former Sunderland player and chairman Niall Quinn says current manager David Moyes needs time to insert his own methods on Wearside after a disappointing start to the Premier League season.

Poor start piles on early pressure

Black Cats boss Moyes, like a couple of his predecessors, has endured a poor start to his first season in the North East, with the club rock bottom of the league having only picked up two points from their first seven league games.

Moyes, like the three Sunderland managers before him, has not been able to win a Premier League game in ethier August or September, with the only victories he has managed coming against lower league opposition in the second and third rounds of the EFL Cup.

Two of the three previous Sunderland managers, Paulo Di Canio and Dick Advocaat ultimately paid the price for below-par starts to the season and the pair weren't in the job that much longer than as long as Moyes has been at the club, so his job may not exactly be safe despite only joining a couple of months ago.

Quinn pleads for club to give Moyes time

Quinn, who played for Sunderland in the late 1990s and held the position of chairman for five years from 2006, also had a crack at the manager's job himself and had a poor start in the club's last Championship season before handing the job over to Roy Keane.

Therefore, the 50-year-old knows the tough nature of the job and told the press that Moyes needs a bit of time, as he said: "He needs to get about three months under his belt, to get his way and maybe have a strong window in January, perhaps do what Sam Allardyce did for the club."

Quinn continued: "It's going to take longer, he's different to Sam, the club were unfortunate, the man went off to manage England."

Even more unfortunate for Sunderland is how quickly Allardyce's tenure with the national team ended and the circumstances of his departure, which has left a sour taste in the mouths of the club's supporters.

Unlucky Moyes

Quinn also believes that the time Moyes has had on Wearside is not exactly the easiest a manager will have to deal with and the fact he's had no real luck yet this season.

He commented on this, saying: "They had catching up to do, Moyes came in, not with one arm tied behind his back, but he couldn't do a lot in the window."

Quinn added that injuries have "mounted" on Moyes and insisted they should look to "get in a good place and maybe get a player" - highlighting the need for "a goalscorer" - in January, insisting that is "probably what he [Moyes] needs to do."

Quinn, a man who both scored and created goals at the Stadium of Light, also acknowledged that the lack of goals is Sunderland's main issue at the moment.

The ex-Republic Of Ireland international concluded on this: "They've got to start spreading the goals about, relying on Jermain Defoe, it's going to be tough."

Still positives

Despite the apparent misery of the start to the season and especially the last two games, both at home where they've thrown away a two goal lead and lost to Crystal Palace, while also only managing a 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion, Quinn believes there are still positives to take from these games.

On the conversations he's had with the Sunderland fans he has a great rapport with, he said: "I've spoken to a lot of fans who support them through thick and thin and there were signs in those games that things were coming together."