Year: 2017

The £5.53m joke: tell Crystal Palace, West Ham £40m couldn’t buy Defoe

by
***         Jake: ‘Jermain, you’re a star’         ***

Like most people, I have no idea what Jermain Defoe’s contract says about his right to leave Sunderland in the event of this or that bid being made.

Like most people, I know that Slaven Bilic rates him as highly as we do and knows his movement and his goals make him an unusually gifted striker. And our old pal Big Sam would apparently love to get him down to the backwaters of south London.

And like all Sunderland supporters, I believe that if Defoe shows the slightest hint of being tempted to join either club, or anyone else, Ellis Short should throw whatever it takes – money, the freedom of Sunderland if he has the ear of someone at the council, even David Moyes’s famed £30,000 watch – to keep him.

Read more

Sixer’s Sevens: Sunderland 2-2 Liverpool. Maybe deserved to win

by
Jake: ‘bonus point! The frustrating thing is that half of that fight and effort would probably have beaten Burnley’

Monsieur Salut writes: what a transformation! Here was a performance unrecognisable from the dross seen at Turf Moor. Most of us would have taken a point before the game; against title contenders, we might easily have won had Anthony Taylor, who had curiously patchy curate’s egg of a game (ie good in parts), given us not two but three penalties, the disallowed one no less a stonewall spot kick than the two he awarded. A good game and Pete Sixsmith‘s instant seven-word verdict reveals a happier man than we heard from at Burnley …

Read more

In case you missed the Liverpool vs Sunderland ‘Who are You?’

by
Jake’s take

HAPPY NEW YEAR

It is not often that a Who are You? interview is re-posted. On this occasion, 24 hours (23 actually) ahead of our home game against Liverpool, it seems a natural thing to do. Why? Well, it’s a good interview but that alone wouldn’t be enough. Nor would the fact that not all readers will have seen it first time around.

It is simple really. The juxtaposition of fixtures over the New Year period, two in three days, led us to publish the Liverpool WAY even before the Watford match had been played (albeit by only the home side since Sunderland didn’t turn up). Even without the latest injuries (Kone and Anichebe), this seemed a tough old game, the sort you go into after a fine away win against a side much lower down the table. That went wrong, of course, so we need heroics tomorrow. Watching Watford v Spurs gave an idea of the gulf between top and lower midtable, so we must expect the worst while hoping for the best when second top meets third bottom. You can still enter Guess the Score, by the way – just forget the Burnley part! …

Read more

Sunderland and the transfer window. Doom and gloom Observed

by
Sixer at The Observer: his Burnley-SAFC match report is not for the squeamish

It hardly seems appropriate after yesterday but Salut! Sunderland wishes all readers, including those who contribute to its pages, a very happy new year …

Monsieur Salut writes: surely no football team sets out to play as woefully as ours did at Burnley yesterday. It just happens. Sadly, of course, it seems to happen to Sunderland more than to most.

Supporting Sunderland has never been easy and few of us will stop doing so because of the meek and clueless surrender at Turf Moor. But where do we go from here (yes, I realise the answer is fairly obvious, but I mean if we are to give ourselves any hope of redemption)? Peter Sixsmith, who suffered with the rest of the travelling contingent in Lancashire, was asked by The Observer to set out our transfer prospects. This was his response, naturally submitted before yesterday’s calamitous events …

Read more

Sixer’s Burnley Soapbox: the death warrant for Sunderland’s Premier League status?

by

 

Pete Sixsmith has endured much as a Sunderland supporter but yesterday’s ordeal was about as bad as it gets. We’re still in a better position points-wise than last year but the omens for improvement via the transfer window don’t look good, and it was transfers that made the difference last season. No-one can be in any doubt significant improvement is needed, and needed desperately; if we continue to play the way we did yesterday we can kiss goodbye to the Premiership for a long, long time, as Pete makes clear in another immaculately observed match report

Read more