Football’s coming back.
The internationals break is over, Sixer doubtless had a grand weekend watching non-league football and Rugby League (he chose for once not to share such experiences with us) and Sunderland are geared up for a return to Premier League action.
There has been rather more pessimism on SAFC vs Spurs than I’d have liked in the scoreline predictions posted so far at https://safc.blog/2014/09/safc-v-tottenham-hotspur-guess-the-score-a-partnership-is-born/
But I am guilty of the same mix of realism and faint hope in my own offering at ESPN.
See the whole preview at http://www.espnfc.com/club/sunderland/366/blog/post/2029564/winning-must-start-soon-for-sunderlandwith-spurs-up-next but here’s an extract:
Gus Poyet leads his squad into action against one of his old clubs fully aware that they start as underdogs. Spurs supporters do not even need to offer a sobering reminder that while their own wait for league honours now stretches to 53 years, Sunderland’s has been a lot longer. Half the Wearsiders’ league titles in the old First Division, the Premier League’s predecessor, were won when Victoria reigned over England; the last was a few months before King Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936.
Six championships may still be three times more than Spurs can claim. But, in 2014, the challenge of restoring semblances of past glory finds the clubs with markedly different immediate ambitions.
… Poyet might be inclined to settle for a draw; he knows all the same that the winning must start soon.
And our Spurs “Who are You?” candidate, Mark Solomon, cockily suggests a 3-1 result in his team’s favour.
Tottenham ‘Who are You?’: on Glenda, Bale, Danny Rose and Chris Turner
I thought Solly’s best reply was the one in which he nobly remembered a superb Chris Turner display in goal for us at White Hart Lane (“charismatic but pitifully small”, to quote Monsieur Salut at ESPN), with two useful inserts added by him and then Salut! Sunderland‘s deputy editor Malcolm Dawson.
Q: Plenty of links going back: beyond Rose, there’s Bent, Steed, Waddle (v briefly for us despite his support for the club), Hutton, Chimbonda, Reid, Stewart. Do memories of any stick out for you?
A: Not really. My best memory of a match against Sunderland was down at the Lane, I think it was a League Cup game in midweek during the 80s [December 1984 – Ed]. Chris Turner was in goal and he played the best game I’ve ever seen from a keeper at the Lane. He was remarkable. I don’t remember the score but I think he stopped us winning. (Spurs 1 SAFC 2, agg 1-2 – Dep Ed)
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