He wanted to finish the season with a flourish, starting at the Reebok but what he witnessed was a horror show from his players who rarely competed with their opponents and never used the ball well when they did get possession.

They would have struggled to play worse and a disgusted Keane said: "It was a sloppy performance and for players to give the ball away willy-nilly under no pressure whatsoever drives me absolutely mental.

"We can defend a lot of stuff that happens on the pitch but sloppily giving the ball is not one of them - we're Sunderland, not a non-league team!

"We were particularly sloppy with our passing in the first half and at this level, you have to pass the ball better, regardless of what stage of the season it is.

"I made three substitutions and I could have made 10.

"Maybe they should change the rules and give us 10 because the only positive I can take from that game was that it was sunny!

"It hurts to be saying this every week: that we need to improve.

"But you see the performances in this game and you have to learn from them.

"I'm not taking anything away from Bolton, they played to their strengths and made it hard for us.

"They've been in the Premier League a long time and they made the most of their experience and they had more men in their team.

"But we gave the ball away so cheaply, especially around the middle of the park and you look at certain players.

"People say we achieved our goal the previous week, so is that it for the season?

"This game was an opportunity for players to make their mark.

"I thought it was a big test for us and I wanted to guage them.

"Would they go into celebration mode, would they switch off, how would they be? And we were sloppy.

"There will be changes, plenty of changes trust me. People say we survived last week but I can't defend players who give the ball away under no pressure."

Now Keane will look to ensure that such a performance is not repeated against last-day opponents Arsenal, who will tear them apart if they reproduce that quality of display.

Keane said: "I don't have much of a choice in terms of changing it because there's not that many players waiting in the wings.

"We will see how it goes on the training pitch in terms of what changes we make.

"To lose 22 games in a season is not great though.

"In defence of the players, what we have to learn as a team is to get results when we're not playing that well.

"It was something that Martin O'Neill was talking about at Aston Villa recently, this need to grind out points when you're not at your best, like we weren't at Bolton.

"I think it's true to say that every point we've got this season we've had to fight and scrap for, I can't remember a single game where we've come away thinking that we got something we didn't deserve.

"You can't play well every game but what we need to do is to be able to get points when we're not playing particularly well."