Colin Randall 
It seems an awful long way to go to see the Lads comfortably beaten in a friendly, depressing everyone about the start of the real season.
The trip is over. We are back in County Durham, tired and worn out, after a 70km detour through northern France, because the bloody navigator in the car thought Ghent was to the east of Brussels and not to the west.
We just about got there. With the help of readers, a couple of emergency nominations and a spectacular own goal from Peter Crouch to fill the last gap (P for Peter), we now have targets for the odd burst of booing for each letter of the alphabet. The posting remains open to improvements suggested by Salut! Sunderland readers …
If you are thinking of nominating your own candidates, bear in mind the basic rules that appear in a footnote**:
* A is for Anyone who played what Johan Cruyff magisterially called anti-football, for the Netherlands versus Spain (see individual entries). And for Nicolas Anelka (see B)
Steve Bruce loathes friendlies anyway and “can’t wait for the real ball to come out”. When it does, Salut! Sunderland will be ready …
You can bet your life we have not heard the last from Pete Sixsmith – lost in Belgium, when last heard of, on his way home from Germany – on the disturbing scoreline from our final pre-season friendly: Hoffenheim 3 Sunderland 1.
What does it cost to send a text message on an English mobile from Germany to a French mobile? Not, I hope, a lot since the receiving end brought only one moment of joy from
Pete Sixsmith in Hoffenheim. After “2-0 down and outclassed” came a long interval before the one-word missive “Henderson” fuelled hope. Almost immediately, it was “3-1” and, well, Salut! Sunderland was left feeling grateful that Pete had sounded cheerful in his second dispatch from Germany, a message from Mannheim sent hours before matchday blues took over …
Day three of our assault on the beer halls of Baden-Wurrtemberg dawned as a bright and clear one. The temperature was up, the sun was shining and the grizzled philosophers who congregated in the bushes opposite the excellent Central Hotel were bathing their dogs in the public water spaces.
Good wins for moneyed QPR, Keano’s Ipswich, Millwall and Hull City – and back down to earth for Leeds – in what we must learn to call the Npower Championship but Salut! Sunderland observes a pre-season pledge to look out for Eric Roy’s Nice team in the French top flight. Not, however, a great opening match …
The question behind my question was posed by the Shields Gazette. Who will finish higher?
The responses of partisan fans are probably meaningless. Which Mackem will say: “Toon, without a doubt”?
The shameful conduct of the French World Cup squad in South Africa has tarnished the reputation of the overpaid, brattish players concerned, and French football in general. Now, leaving aside the meaningless exclusion from a friendly, comes the reckoning. Colin Randall reports …
One of my regular newsagents had sold out of L’Equipe. It was first item on the French TF1 news last night. The French Football Federation has sent five players to a disciplinary commission for their part in the “billionaires’ strike”, as one French magazine called it.
Or, more truthfully, from Heidelberg. A first dispatch from
Pete Sixsmith , who is on the pre-season trail with Sunderland – except when getting hopelessly lost – and gagging for the game against Hoffenheim …
Well we arrived. It took longer than we thought, but we made it to Heidelberg after a long, long journey that tested the Mazda 6 and its passengers, but by 8pm on Thursday the four of us were sampling our first German beers in a small corner bar midway between the hotel and the town centre.
The trip was going well until we decided to drop into the riverside town of Boppard for a rest, a meal and a shufty at the River Rhine. All three were accomplished and we followed the scenic route down the river gorge to Bingen – and then missed a sign.
So who in football makes your hackles rise? Do the cheats, the poseurs or bonebreakers enrage you most – or is it a certain ref, manager, TV pundit or Fleet Street hack? I’ll start my own list here, but everyone is welcome to add to it, filling in the missing entries or second-guessing my choices. If the responses flow, I’ll keep bringing the item back to the top of the site (and insert your updates) …
Sorry, but comments from people who haven’t posted before are subject to a short delay for anti-spam moderation
A list of who to cheer would be shorter. I’d put Howard Webb on mine, for dealing as well as he did – give or take a couple of errors – with the uncharacteristically thuggish Dutch in the World Cup final. But then I know he’d just reward me with one of those point(s)-denying decisions of his against Sunderland. Aaron Ramsey will definitely get a Salut! Sunderland cheer, but first he must recover from that horrendous injury.
So let’s make it, for now, an A to Z of the players, management, officials or others to whom we should consider giving a torrid reception in the 2010-2011 Premier League season. I will set the ball rolling; your job is to fill in the gaps or improve on my selections.
Fingers crossed that it’s true: we naturally hope at least one other signing will be made before the transfer deadline at the end of the month (that goalie crisis rings a bell), but this could prove to be the deal of our close season ….
SEE UPDATE, WITH OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION(-ish) IN THIRD COMMENT BELOW
The one person who should know whether or not a player has signed for Sunderland is the player himself.
On that basis we ought to be shouting from the rooftops in praise of Steve Bruce and Niall Quinn for clinching the return of John Mensah to the Stadium of Light.
NB: Apologies if you found Salut! Sunderland inaccessible while our friends at Footballunited.com carried out site maintenance in the early hours of Fri Aug 6. They promised it was all in a good cause.
