Richard Armstrong: ‘make that Walkers prawn cocktail crisps for me’
Monsieur Salut writes: our Luton Town interviewee, Richard Armstrong*, is Hatters through and through: ‘I guess it was just in my blood. All my family have supported Luton. There never was any other team for me.’ He readily agreed to answer Salut! Sunderland‘s questions about his club, ours and football in general.
Richard writes for D3D4football.com, at first glance a very deserving site about Leagues One and Two. We’d rather be somewhere else, but we’re among his list of ‘proper’ clubs helping to populate the third tier ….
We’ve chosen one of Jake’s generic Salut! Sunderland images as this is a democratic effort
Monsieur Salut writes: we’re all hoping the football from Jack Ross’s new-look Sunderland side will generate an electric atmosphere for today’s opening game against Charlton Athletic. But would you feel better if you were sitting in a stand named after a SAFC hero rather than the geographically sound but dull East, West, North and South? Have your say here …
[polldaddy poll=10070350]
Back in 2007, Sunderland went to Luton for the last game of the season as a side already promoted to the Premier League under Roy Keane. A sensational 5-0 victory, and Birmingham’s defeat at Preston, gave Keano the title. This is how, 11 years ago, the youthful Salut! Sunderland recorded the win.
Less than four months later, we were back at Kenilworth Road for a League Cup game. Greg Halford was sent off and the match ended with a comfortable 3-0 victory for the Hatters.
I last saw Sunderland play in February, at the Macron, when we lost 1-0 in a dire and dreary game. Things have changed since then, not least the playing squad. In fact, in my three previous games I’d seen twenty-eight players starting, and the Charlton game was to add another eight. The only three I’d seen previously were Love, against Watford in December 2016, Matthews, at Preston almost a year ago, and Honeyman, whom I’d seen alongside Matthews and again at Bolton.
So many changes explains my inability to recognise players; these things take time. Three different managers and inept performances explain my inability to recognise the system(s) they adopted. Patterns and interplay you might have come to expect pass me by completely, I don’t know who fits where; everything is new.
Taken all together it explains why I find it difficult to give a minute by minute or player by player commentary. But you’ve already had Pete Sixsmith’s report, and Malcolm’s introduction. You don’t need anything along those lines from me, even if I could emulate Pete. What I’ll try to do instead is give you a different perspective and write about the players who stuck out, for good or bad.
Click on Jake’s banner to take you to the Salut! Sunderland home page – and the best writing you’ll find on SAFC 2-1 Charlton
There was a technical issue with the original posting, which this supersedes …
Monsieur Salut has done a trawl through one Charlton fan forum, Charlton Life, to check on the reactions of Addicks fans, whether in the travelling support, watching on TV or absent altogether, to their side’s opening-day defeat at Sunderland …
?? Lee Bowyer impressed by his Charlton side's performance despite late heartbreak at Sunderland
Click on Jake’s banner to take you to the Salut! Sunderland home page
And enjoy this for as long as it lasts at YouTube …
We all see (or hear) games slightly differently, says Monsieur Salut. I repeated what seemed the fairly general despair at Sunderland’s first half performance – OK, maybe it was the first 30-35 minutes – only to be taken to task by a reader who thought otherwise.
Alone among the four-man Salut! Sunderland editorial team, I saw nothing of the match, being back in the UK but not for long enough to get back to the North East.
Oops. This is a mere sample of the piece that will be published in full tomorrow (Sunday). Some hardly untypical incompetence on the part of Monsieur Salut led the posting to be published prematurely.
Peter Lynn is a regular home and away. Even home means a slog from afar. Today he was absent; he delays his football season for cricket to finish. But that doesn’t stop him acclaiming our first opening-day win since 2009. And his way of doing so? Same old music …
Jake’s back, too, and can hardly believe he already has a win to illustrate
After a disappointing first 45 minutes of our League One season – and let it be one season, for the right reason – goals from Josh Maja and, in the dying moments of the game, Lynden Gooch brought three massively encouraging points against Charlton Athletic.
Pete Sixsmith was not alone in representing the Salut! Sunderland editorial team at the Stadium of Light. Malcolm Dawson, deputy editor, and John McCormick, associate editor, too their places, too, among a remarkable 31,079 in the qround, leaving poor old Monsieur Salut – in London too briefly to be able to get up north for the game – to make do with Barnes and Benno after one local pub failed to stop the live coverage channel bouncing to Sky News and the other refused to show it.
When we went one down, to a penalty converted with absolute predictability by Lyle Taylor, who chose to join Charlton and not us in the close season, I feared the worst. But B&B saw lots of positives, Maja grabbed the equaliser as we appeared to improve greatly on a mostly poor first 45 minutes and, from what Benno described as an Oviedo cross of great quality, Gooch headed the winner.
Here, Sixer resumes his traditional seven-word summaries of each match he attends. He emphasises the important role played by the academy and in a second verdict, added ‘Top of the league; SAFC are top’. Rest assured he’ll have more to say later …