Boxing Day football. A 40,000 plus gate for a home game against opponents from the North West brings back unfortunate memories …
My first Boxing Day at Roker Park.
We’re second placed and it looks like being a promotion season.
Year: 2009
A happy Christmas from Salut! Sunderland
… and a prosperous new year to all readers, especially if you support Sunderland. With thanks again to Kevin Dooley’s …
Who are you? We’re Everton
ToffeeWeb, the much-admired independent site for supporters of Everton, has a hard centre but softer heart. Lyndon Lloyd‘s instinctive response when approached by us to preview Saturday’s clash between Sunderland and Everton was to say : “Sorry, we don’t do these things. No time.” He relented because of the trouble we’d taken to hunt him down. The algebraic equation of that hunt would be Relatively Uncommon Name + Facebook = Found. But thanks Lyndon*, and Salut! Sunderland wishes you and your site a very happy Christmas marred only by disappointment on Boxing Day …
Salut! Sunderland: After all that praise for David Moyes, we are now hearing the voices of disappointment. Is it time for change?
It depends on who you ask! There are some who have long been infuriated with his conservative tactics and the propensity for his teams to fall back on the long-ball game in times of adversity, but you can’t argue with his record at Everton on a shoe-string budget.
Three consecutive top-6 finishes and, so far, the record of the only team outside of the so-called Sky Four to have cracked the Champions League places this century speak for itself and I don’t think it would do us any good right now to disrupt the consistency that we’ve enjoyed the last seven years.
A Christmas football wishlist. 3 (R-Z): the return to Roker Park, Paraguay for the cup
OK Father Christmas, père Noël, Papá Noel, ??????????, ????? ??????? – this completes Salut! Sunderland’s Christmas wishlist. We’ll leave your usual bottle of beer and cigar by the Christmas tree …
R is for Roker Park. We wake from the dream to find ourselves back on/in the (much modernised) Fulwell, Clock Stand Paddock, Roker End, wherever it was we used to stand (or, for those who already did in those days, sit). The Stadium of Light’s great and all that, but can you actually fall in love with the East Stand?
A Christmas football wishlist. 2 (J-Q): St Niall unbans fans, Keano out
For the second part of our letter to Santa, we name a few more of the things we’d like to see over the coming months. Come up with the best or funniest alternative wish for any letter – as judged by Salut! Sunderland – and we’ll send a tenner (up to one prize for each of the three parts of the series) ….
J is for Joan’s cafe, named as the venue for a Jedward concert after the nearby Stadium of Light is judged too big considering the likely turnout. Tickets narrowly fail to sell out.
K is for Roy Keane, who leaves Ipswich “by mutual consent” in May as relegation confirmed. When Grant Leadbitter and Carlos Edwards send text messages in commiseration, Keano replies saying: “I refer you both to what I told Dwight Yorke when he sent a similar SMS after I left Sunderland.”
A Christmas football wishlist. 1 (A-I): Thierry Henry in Gaelic, Darlo in the playoffs
Is Santa listening? Probably not, but Salut! Sunderland thought it would produce its own list of the presents it wants, the things it wants to happen not just for Christmas but for the coming year. Let’s see how many are granted. This is the first of three instalments. Come up with a better suggestion or two and you might win a prize …
A is for Arsène. The elegantly whingeing Alsacian – (“is that why they’re called Arsenal?” asked the daughter who knows nothing about football) – announces a new deal with Optical Express, suddenly sees things more clearly, apologises for his players’ occasional diving and heaps praise on teams that beat or draw against Arsenal as well as those that lose.
B is for Bruce: Steve wins three manager-of-the-month awards in succession and we’re not only safe but sixth.
Soapbox: a black and white Christmas carol
What the Dickens is this? Why, nought but a heartwarming tale from the season of goodwill, in which Sir Michael Ashley plays Scroogely, the fans play with large alphabet shapes but still cannot get the hang of spelling the simplest of words and the One Wise Man plays himself. Are you sitting quietly? Then Pete Sixsmith will begin …
Once upon a time – on, of all the good days the year, Christmas Eve – old Scroogely sat in his counting house at sports direct deckchair stripes@stmikes’park.com. He looked up and snarled at Bob Lambias, his poor benighted clerk, who sat in the cold, cheerless office surrounded by Lonsdale track suits and Dunlop trainers.
The greatest FA cup final shock of all time?
Just out: Lance Hardy’s carefully researched story of the 1973 cup final when Sunderland threw off underdog status to defeat Don Revie’s mighty Leeds and win the FA Cup. It needs a great leap of faith to think you’ve much chance of getting the book from Amazon before Christmas. But you can get it, by clicking this link, at the knockdown price of just over £11 (instead of £18.99 and it’s even cheaper if you opt for second hand).
Colin Randall wallows in nostalgia …
Where were you when Sunderland beat Leeds 1-0 in the FA Cup Final of May 5 1973?
Soapbox: Manchester horror show – or a corner turned?
About the last thing to be expected fromPete Sixsmith after yesterday’s lamentable defensive display at Man City was the see-it-both-ways equanimity of his own chosen headline. Mark Hughes was sacked for a run markedly better than ours. Pete keeps the faith up to a point. He reckons on seven points from the next three games being pretty much non-negotiable if the slump isn’t to become a crisis. Where have we heard that before? …
The feeling on the coach home from the City of Manchester Stadium last night was certainly the former: a full scale, 3D, Todd AO, Cinemascope, horror show, redolent of Hammer Films in all its gory, bloody detail.
Man City 4 SAFC 3: a shambles Observed
The Observer came calling again. Pete Sixsmith not only had to endure comic defending by Sunderland. he then had to …