Middlesbrough vs Sunderland Guess the Score as the curtain crashes down

Let’s not beat about the bush. Wrinkly Pete’s rose-tinted crystal ball couldn’t save us and nor could my sister and her family’s Boro passions save them from the drop. We are both going down, leaving little more than pride – and avoidance of bottom place – at stake at the Riverside on Wednesday.

The maths are simple enough. We lose at Boro and Hull need only a win and draw from four games – even allowing for goal difference changes – to send us down. Say they drew two and lost two; we’d still have to win five of our six remaining games and hope Swansea and Boro didn’t stand in our way.

It seems completely unfair on the sell-out Sunderland support that so little now seems to rest on the game.

So let Salut! Sunderland chuck in a mug or a book to make things interesting. There, we though that would cheer you all up.

Guess the Boro v Sunderland score, be first to get it right and yiou choose between a Salut! Sunderland mug and the mini-edition of Nick Barnes’s Matchbook. In either case, the Bradley Lowery fund would benefit by a fiver. Boro fans are welcome to join in and we will try to find a suitable Boro-related prize. The winner must have a UK delivery address.

Apologies to those waiting for recently won prizes. Monsieur Salut’s journalistic duties have been weighing heavily with the French elections, but the mug(s) and Matchbook(s) will be ordered as soon as I can get over the fact (not really a shock though) that nearly seven million French people have just voted for an odious racist/concerned patriot (delete according to choice).

Ha’way the Lads.

And see a great Who are You? interview with Boro-supporting, bass-playing London exile Catherine Wilson at https://safc.blog/2017/04/the-middlesbrough-who-are-you-on-juninho-laura-laverne-and-two-doomed-clubs/

Sample:

Salut! Sunderland: What about us … we’ve never really got started apart from one brief period before Christmas. Did you see it coming or did you think Moyes had enough about him to keep us safe?

Catherine: … I worried for Sunderland almost from the get go, particularly when Moyes dropped those cloying comments back in August about a relegation battle being a dead cert. It’s ok to be honest about where you are and what you can achieve, but what is football without a little bit of hoping and dreaming?