Former Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn has delivered a scathing assessment of Paolo di Canio's time as manager.

The Italian was sacked on Sunday.

"When you're in a battle you need a leader who you all look up to and want to go into a fight with," he told talkSPORT. "Paolo Di Canio was ducking out of the battle by blaming the players and saying what a great manager he was.

"When you say all that publicly it's bad enough, but can you imagine what was going on in the dressing room after those defeats?

"Most of his new signings felt this way as well so it's not like there was a bad element there. It was very brave of the players to do what they did.

"Player power will get criticised but in this particular incident they felt they were going into battle with a leader who wasn't with them."