Soapbox: happy days are here again

Sing when you’re winning? Win when you’re singing more like. It was a good enough philosophy for FDR and Pete Sixsmith reckons it’s good enough for us

The greatest of all US presidents, Franklin D Roosevelt, was also the first to have a campaign song.

Because of the Great Depression he wanted it to be positive. So he chose Happy days are here again; wherever he went, it was played.

As a result, he won four elections, which is one less than the number of wins we have had this season, so maybe Roy is better than FDR.

There are a lot of similarities between the two; both liked dogs, both have three initials and er…. well, you get the picture. Having said that, I wouldn’t fancy FDR picking the right team for a relegation scrap at the Reebok in April.

What a good weekend for Sunderland fans.
Fulham lost again on Saturday afternoon and the other results could have been a lot worse. Then came Old Trafford and a display of such mind blowing garbage from the Mags that you almost felt sorry for the foot soldiers of the Toon Army – until, that is, you saw the overfed, underbrained ones taking their hideous shirts off and twirling them round their heads.

It was all set up for Sunday. Redknapp showed consummate common sense in staying at Pompey rather than moving north and being sacked six months later because he was not entertaining enough.

Obviously he couldn’t ride a unicycle and juggle at the same time. It reminds me of a mate at college who went to see Leonard Cohen at the City Hall but didn’t enjoy him “because he wasn’t versatile enough”.

Kenwyne was back in the team and there was a feeling that the decks were being cleared for action.

There was a shaky start when Benjani should have scored, but we settled and a couple of hard tackles by Miller and Yorke (honest) got the crowd going.

The first goal was a combination of persistence (Kenwyne), lack of concentration (Campbell) and sheer pace (Kieran). Few people in the ground thought that Jones would keep the ball in, but when he played it in we could all see Richardson arriving ahead of the Pompey defender and bang – we were one up.

The second one owed a lot to hard tackling, no mean skill by Murphy and another example of Kieran’s blistering pace over a short distance. He left Hreidarsson standing and reminded me of Marco in his pomp as he slotted it in.

The hat trick goal would have brought the house down. As it was, his shot almost broke the bar and we proceeded to look comfortable for the first time this season. The defence was much more solid and Evans capped a good performance by making an outstanding tackle on Benjani to help maintain a rare clean sheet for Craig Gordon.

So, as I sit here at my keyboard, established readers will know that I am wearing a white shirt with SAFC tie, SAFC cufflinks, SAFC wristwatch and I have dyed my hair red and white to celebrate. Okay, the last bit was wrong, but I did think about it.

The news that we could have Steve Sidwell for the rest of the season capped a most pleasant weekend and as long as we don’t mess up at Spurs on Saturday we could now begin to put a run together and get closer to the Mags. They play Bolton on Saturday and although it sticks in the craw to want them to win we need to keep the likes of Bolton and Reading down there with us.

Mind you, if they have a new manager they had better win well or else the Toon Army, pathetically, will be demanding his head and campaigning for a more entertaining manager again.

What about Bruce?…….. no, not Steve, Bruce Forsyth. He can do a little bit of everything and managing that bunch of half hearted surrender monkeys would be a real challenge for him. He might even get them to keep their feet on the ground when thet form a wall. It’s always nice to know that however bad things may be with us, they can always go at least one better.