AFC Bournemouth v Sunderland: roll up for a Guess the Score rollover

Sixer’s travel plans are sorted. Weymouth with Pete Horan (where’s that Defoe piece, Pete – Ed?) by Thursday, Bournemouth Saturday, somewhere – doubtless involving football – on Sunday, back Monday. But can he come home with three points?

There was much to give us hope in the Spurs match. As Mick Goulding has pointed out (see comments at https://safc.blog/2015/09/sixers-tottenham-soapboxdefeat-but-new-boys-and-borini-earn-their-spurs/#comments – Ed), Yann M’Vila really is the business in midfield. Borini will get stronger and sharper. O’Shea and Kaboul looked solid and Lens, from the beaten side, was man of the match (for M Salut and for others).

What we need now is for Defoe to score against one of the many clubs he’s played for (18 goals in 29 games when there), a club he was linked to in transfer window speculation.

Guess the Score is a rollover this week, provided the powers-to-be at our sponsors, Personalised Football Gifts agree to continue that part of the arrangement. That doesn’t mean a Lottery style jackpot, but it would mean two mugs.

As always, the opposition is welcome to join in the fun. A Bournemouth fan who was first to guess the eventual scoreline (but before kickoff) would win a mug more suited to his or her tastes. The winner must have a UK delivery address and Monsieur Salut’s decision is always final.

Dick Advocaat will know better than to trifle with Bournemouth. They played some excellent football to go up and have had a somewhat better start to this season than us. Our “Who are You?” interviewee, Steve Menary, reckons most supporters expect them to stay up; he also expects around 1,000 fans to make the long trip north for the return in January, a figure that sounds like half their average attendance.

But “My Garden Shed” jibes aside, we can applaud Bournemouth’s rise from near-ruin. They can even stay up if they really want just as long as we get six points from them on our way to loftier heights.

Here’s a quick extract from Stveve’s Q and A, which will appear in full on Thursday morning:

Salut! Sunderland: Who are the best you’ve seen in your colours – and who, Stéphane Zubar apart [already mentioned in another answer- Ed], should have been allowed nowhere near them?

Steve Menary: Watching George Best play in the early 1980s was incredible. He was unfit and overweight, but still had amazing skill (Editor’s note: five games in 1983, between stints with even fewer appearance at Sea Bee and Hong Kong Rangers beforehand and Brisbane Lions, Osborne Park Gale, Nuneaton Borough and Tobermore United afterwards). Given the amount of time Bournemouth have spent scuffling around the lower leagues, we’ve had a few woeful players and Roger Boli was one. After seven games in 1998/99, he quit. I wasn’t surprised.

Ha’way the Lads

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Now see what M Salut had to say on his ESPN blog

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