Colin Randall

Salut! Sunderland was edited by Colin Randall up until December 2019 - read more

Sixer’s Sevens: Oxford set the scene for the season

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Sixer keeping cool

John McCormick writes: I was surprised at that line-up and wonder how much it had to do with match fitness. Whatever the reason, the performance in the first half will have given Jack Ross some food for thought. Still, a point is better than nowt, as my granny never said. But myself, Pete Sixsmith, who was at the match whereas I wasn’t, and Jake all have the same dread thought. “is that single point a harbinger of another long grind and an unforgiving season?”
We’ll have a better idea after tomorrow, when Pete has had time to compose a more considered opinion. For now you’ll have to do with the seven word text he sent winging over flood-threatened valleys and a forlorn Bury in order to brighten your evening:

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Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Peterborough, Rotherham and Doncaster – the League One top six?

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John McCormick,  writes: our ‘who to follow’ poll remained quiet, although the trickle of votes that came in over the last week did result in some changes. Sunderland and Portsmouth are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Ipswich, Rotherham and Peterborough. Then come Doncaster, who edged ahead of Coventry, followed at a distance by Lincoln and Burton.

I did expect Blackpool to do better but our site appears to have attracted few of their fans. Their season tickets had reached 4,818, when I last checked, so there’s obviously life returning to this once-troubled club. That’s about twice the number sold by Coventry, whose own troubles are nowhere being resolved and who slipped out of our top six after Doncaster Rovers gained a few votes. A third troubled club, Bolton Wanderers, who might or might not be sold by the time this post goes live, also didn’t do too badly and finished in the top half of the table. I don’t know how they’ll do that with only 7 first team players but what do I know about football?

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Sunderland vs Oxford United: the sound of silence

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Jake: let’s get off to a winning start


Well that went down well. Our cheeky attempt to draw some thoughts from Oxford United supporters ahead of Saturday’s opening League One game at the Stadium of Light, fell on deaf ears.

Charlie Methven, Sunderland executive director but also a fervent Oxford United fan, has spoken on these pages of the passion his fellow supporters feel for their club. So we will give it one more try. If you support Oxford and feel like answering one or more of the questions below, just post a comment and specify the number/s of the question/s (one to seven) to which you are responding …

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Pete Sixsmith, George Honeyman, wonderstrikes, and many points to ponder

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Pete Sixsmith writes: I have been dormant since that gut wrenching, heart breaking, anger inducing last minute defeat to Charlton, a game which showed that we were not good enough over 46 league games or over 90 minutes, two observations that were as worrying as they were disappointing.

Subsequently, I paid little attention to and took little interest in what was going on in the football world, a world that for many seems only to exist at Eastlands, Old Trafford, Anfield, Stamford Bridge, Ashburton Grove and White Hart Lane. Or, if you are a Newcastle United supporter, outside of a Sports Direct shop where you can shout rude things about the owner.

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Sunderland vs Oxford, goals (secretly) galore and a fond farewell from Bryan Oviedo

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The goals we wanted finally came – and no fans were there to witness them, says Monsieur Salut. Our new striker Marc McNulty grabbed a confidence-boosting hat-trick and one apiece from Aiden McGeady and Chris Maguire gave Sunderland a 5-2 win over Hartlepool.

I could find no trace of this on the club site – the game was played in private (behind closed doors seems a daft phrase when applied to the Academy of Light) – but you’ll find a brief account at the Sunderland Echo site.

And now – while bidding farewell to Bryan Oviedo, off the payroll with a move to the Danish top-flight side FC Copenhagen (he goes with our thanks and good wishes, reciprocated above) – on to the real business. Tell us how you think SAFC will fare in Saturday’s League One opener against Oxford United.

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An invitation to Oxford United supporters ahead of the League One opener at Sunderland

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It began more than 11 years ago as Who are They? and evolved quickly into Who are You?, Salut Sunderland‘s series of interviews with fans of each of Sunderland’s opposing clubs. We’ve had the famous and the not-so-famous, creating a rich archive of often quite outstanding features. There have been few gaps and those that have occurred did so mostly because supporters who promised to answer our questions failed in the end, for whatever reasons, to deliver.

All good things come to an end, however. The business of finding willing fans, pinning them down and getting the interviews published can be complicated and is usually time-consuming. The resulting readership figures do not always justify our efforts or those of the interviewees.

We shall start this season with a rough-and-ready replacement. A shorter list of questions will be posted here before each game and the fans of each club due to face Sunderland will be invited to answer.

If the idea works, we will maintain the annual HAWAY (Highly Articulated Who Are You?) awards for the best sets of answers. If it doesn’t, it will be quietly dropped. Salut! Sunderland thanks the army of opposition fans who made the series something of which we and they can be reasonably proud.

And here are the questions for Oxford United fans. Don’t worry if your responses fail to appear as soon as sent; an anti-spam device means comments submitted by visitors who have not done so in the past are held briefly for moderation …

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Heerenveen today, gone tomorrow. Now for Sunderland goals to flow

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Monsieur Salut, adapted by Jake from Matt’s cartoon

Stop Press: a 5-2 win against Hartlepool – three goals from McNulty and one each from McGeady and Maguire.
And Bryan Oviedo is off the wage bill with a move to the FC Copenhagen in the Danish Superliga ….. good luck, Bryan

Sunderland may yet score before the season starts, hopes Monsieur Salut. Fittingly, no one will be there to see it.

After the 1-0 defeat to the Dutch top-flight side Heerenveen, only a week remains before the League One season kicks off with a home game against our owner and executive director’s team of choice, Oxford United.

But at least our goal shy Lads have a chance to boost morale a little with a behind-closed-doors final friendly of the pre-season, versus Hartlepool United on Monday. Yes, we know these games are about fitness more than results but it would do no harm to hear we’d actually hit the back of the net.

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Salut! Sunderland’s welcome to George Dobson – a big midfielder and what’s more, we paid for him

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George Dobson:a great photo, reproduced with the kind permission of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: at around 8pm, I switched on my phone after landing at Stansted, noticed the signing of George Dobson had been announced and prepared to write our usual welcoming piece on the train into London. Fat chance. The sun had come out and there were no trains. Nor any notice to that effect obviously visible in arrivals so passengers had to traipse all the way down to the platform only to be sent back to the terminal to queue for National Express tickets and then traipse one floor back down to locate the coach station. It was a grim ride into the capital. Probably unfair to blame Brexit but I’ll doubtless find a way. But here’s the delayed welcome …

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A frog or a prince? Salut! Sunderland welcomes Marc McNulty

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Jake’s salute to SuperKev. If only…

John McCormick writes: there’s a saying somewhere to the extent that you need to kiss a lot of frogs to get your prince. That has to be true of us. We’ve had Marco, Sir Kevin and Jermain Defoe, and also Darren Bent, but we’ve also had Tore Andre Flo, Asamoah Gyan, Steven Fletcher,  Kenwyne Jones, Marcus Stewart, Thomas Hauser, Kevin Kyle, David Bellion, Connor Whickham, Danny Dichio, Frazier Campbell, Jozy Altidore and Danny Bloody Graham (ISHS) among others.

And now we have Will Grigg and Charlie Wyke. Neither, it has to be said, has filled me with delight. Neither, it has to be said, has shone in the pre-season games. Or have I got it wrong? I wasn’t there, I have seen hardly any TV, and what do I know about football anyway? Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will correct me.

Or perhaps one of them will smack in half a dozen goals when we take on Oxford and prove me wrong that way.

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Promotion poll: Sunderland vie with Portsmouth but can Burton, Lincoln or Doncaster make top six?

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John McCormick, associate editor, writes: things have quietened down with our ‘who to follow’ poll, as we might expect. Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Rotherham and Peterborough. Then comes Coventry, followed at a distance by Donny, Lincoln and Burton.

That’s interesting because on Wednesday over at  Roker Report, Nick Barnes, who knows more about football than I ever will,  identified Lincoln and Burton as teams that could mount a challenge to Sunderland, along with Ipswich, Portsmouth, Peterborough and Coventry. He didn’t mention Rotherham.

I could extend our watch list to eight clubs, even nine on the grounds that Donny are ahead of Lincoln and Burton in our poll, and I have added clubs during the season – Luton last season being the most recent – but it makes graphics difficult to follow. So I’m going to stick with six.

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