Colin Randall
Monsieur Salut writes: Pete Sixsmith raised this question here several months ago. It occurred to me again as I wrote my preview of Sunderland vs Stoke City for ESPN FC – is Mark Hughes’s side, and the club itself, more or less what SAFC should be aiming to emulate? Why can they attract players with greater apparent ease than us, and how do they manage to get into the top half so often (OK, a bad start this season makes that a taller order for 2016-17)?
This was essentially how Wrinkly Pete – a regular Salut! Sunderland contributor Peter Lynn – began his crystal ball-gazing look at Sunderland’s survival prospects. But we have now amended the sequence starting with Leicester (a), taking account of revised predictions, and will continue to do until thd bitter end. In the case of each match, he predicts the outcome and later comments on the reality. This file will be updated as the season draws to its merciful close …
Peter Lynn dips back into his collection of dodgy old hits for inspiration as he does some back-of-envelope calculations on what David Moyes needs from the second half of the season if Sunderland are yet again to avoid the drop. He even allows for the unthinkable, losing at home to Stoke on Saturday , as he steers us to safety…
I’m sending out an SOS, ‘cos I’m in so much distress
So sang Edwin Starr on his hit Stop Her On Sight and I am hoping that I will not feel the same as I begin my four-hour drive home, post match on Saturday.
If David Moyes, pre-match on Saturday, can get his team to realise that this is War, another of Starr’s hits, then we might get a win and make a further small (?) step towards safety.
The story of Neil Baldwin* is an astonishing and uplifting one. Born to devoted Stoke City supporters, Neil had learning difficulties and needed speech therapy. He has made light of this, and his lack of formal academic qualifications, to work tirelessly as a lay preacher, circus clown and for many years the Potters’ kit man. He has his own football team, Neil Baldwin FC, with players drawn from the student body of Keele University, of which he is an honorary graduate having given 50 years of voluntary service in welcoming new undergraduates. Football celebrities, notably Lou Macari but also including Kevin Keegan and Gary Lineker, have acclaimed or befriended him or both.
When Macari, then managing Stoke, made him the kit man, he said it was the best signing he had ever made, such was the positive effect of his humour on the squad. He played five minutes a sub in a testimonial for Gordon Cowans in 1993 and, most famously, inspired the film Marvellous, based on his life.
‘It says everything for Neil that Marvellous was ever made,’ wrote the Stoke Sentinel TV critic, John Woodhouse. ‘In times when TV is seduced by vacuity and celebrity, it doesn’t sound that promising a pitch. A drama, set in Newcastle [under-Lyme], about a man saddled with the tag of “learning difficulties” who reveals himself to be so much more? Good luck with that one. And yet here it is – primetime BBC2.’
The autobiography, Marvellous: Neil Baldwin – My Story, written with the help of Keele University alumni Malcolm Clarke (a recent Who are You? interviewee) and Francis Beckett, was published by John Blake in 2015.
Welcome to Salut! Sunderland, Neil …
Guess the Score … in which the esteemed supporters of Sunderland and Stoke City, both sides acquainted with that most prestigious of colour schemes, red and white stripes, are warmly invited to predict the scoreline that history shall record …
Why is this week’s Guess the Score appearing early again this week? OK, the main reason is that no one has anything else they want to say beyond pointless reflections on transfers that may or may not happen.
Pete Sixsmith was among the tens of thousands who gave a miss to Sunderland vs Burnley. Oh what they missed. Sixer’s comeuppance came when the match he chose instead ended with a heavy defeat in the FA Vase for Shildon. the first team M Salut and almost certainly he saw in their County Durham boyhoods. Next day, he dutifully attended Sunderland Under 23s against Everton and still could get a win … there’s just a passing, sorrowful reference to the plight of SAFC Ladies; read more at this Sunderland Echo link
Monsieur Salut writes: now that we’ve done away with the nonsenses of ‘Dear Colin’ at the beginning and ‘All the best’ at the end, e-mails from the manager have an impersonal and sometimes perfunctory look. But what else could David Moyes say about the drab affair that was Sunderland 0-0 Burnley, the outcome probably the worst of three options? I’ might have liked a fuller explanation of his thinking, when throwing on a defender for a midfielder as his only (very late) substitution, but there we go. I share his satisfaction at Jack Rodwell’s improved form (my man-of-the-match too) but this was another game best forgotten …
Monsieur Salut writes: To no great surprise Pete Sixsmith preferred Shildon vs Atherton Collieries in the FA Vase. He kept in touch via Barnes and Benno, describing a drab game short on quality and ending goalless before all of 17.632 souls (but my emergency seven-worder appears for now). With a replay almost the last thing Sunderland wanted, and young Joel Asoro on the bench, David Moyes had sent on John O’Shea late as his only substitution. Mmm …
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ESPN FC ran a fascinating survey on whether their blogger for each Premier League club – Monsieur Salut does the honours for Sunderland with occasional stand-ins by Mr Sixsmith (think Colin Todd on the bench for Gareth Hall and you get the picture) – would buy Jermain Defoe and if yes, what they’d pay.
The brands – so many of whose supporters find it a struggle to locate “their” club by pointing to a map – all voted the same way: No.
Everyone else, save for West Brom, jumped at the idea.
… in which Pete Sixsmith looks back on the good, bad and exceedingly ugly FA Cup 3rd Round ties he remembers with affection or disgust …
Excitement levels among Sunderland supporters, it has to be said, have not been high over the impending FA Cup tie with Burnley.
I have my ticket due to the Cup Ticket option but am considering missing out in order to watch a tasty FA Vase tie between Shildon and Atherton Collieries. But it did get me thinking about epic and disastrous third round clashes in the past.