Colin Randall 
It’s perhaps too early to panic, but there is no mistaking the gloom that has descended on the Stadium of Light. If losing 2-0 to a buoyant Aston Villa side was not in itself disastrous, the defeat followed all too many dismal Sunderland performances.Pete Sixsmith explains why a decent display last night was not good enough …
We were well beaten. Villa were a better side. We have some problems. Three statements that, to my mind, are non-controversial, but I hope those who read them
The dreadful run continues. Sunderland cannot finish off lowly teams – or even score against some of them – and can hardly count on doing fairly well, fairly consistently when confronted by the elite. Cana’s heroics have not been forgotten but he starts to look like a liability, the only question each game being how many minutes will elapse before he is shown a card. The first of our forlorn post-Villa reflections is, in part, a tale of two managers …
Steve Bruce, admittedly struggling with a squad hit by injuries and suspensions, plays his best available teams and gets a single point from two home games. Mick McCarthy gets slated for fielding reserves at Old Trafford (and yes, the travelling Wolves fans should be given £100 a head refunds for their wasted evening), but emerges with three points from two tough away games.
Here is a reminder of the search launched by Sky Sports for the best football fans in the land. There will a league table, placing the fans of all 92 league clubs in order, and prizes are promised. Anyone got the answer? Naturally, we all think that answer is staring them in the face and comes from the Stadium of Light. Look at the video and decide whether you’d like to get involved and shout about your passion …
Imagine it. You support Chelsea, Arsenal, Man United or Liverpool. You’ve followed them for ever, or rather since you were old enough to work out they were quite good and won a lot. You may even have been to the city where they play.
If Salut! Sunderland‘s generosity with its space is matched by Villa’s generosity to the opposition, our fears after a rotten run since the Arsenal win may be unfounded. I certainly didn’t expect so many Villa fans to come forward with previews ahead of tonight’s game but am happy to publish a third contribution – from Gary Gleeson* – because, like our Pompey previewer last week, he lives within Gary McAllister diving distance of the Stadium of Light. Gary, chairman of the Villa supporters’ North East Lions’ Club, reached us via the VillaTalk site …
Salut! Sunderland How come you’re a Villa fan in the North East? Even if you’re from Brum, SAFC should have rubbed off on you by now!
I’ve been in the North East for about six years now. Originally from Dublin, I’m a Villa fan because of the Irish contingent of Paul McGrath, Steve Staunton and Ray Houghton.
It’s been a good weekend for precocious youth. A kid from South Shields – surely that must make him a Sunderland fan, despite Cheryl Cole’s attentions – is voted best karaoke singer. And young Josh Henwood* sees his preview of SAFC vs Aston Villa appear at Salut! Sunderland not once but twice. A technical fault (the editor’s incompetence) caused it to appear early. Josh, another Villa fan found at the VillaTalk site, is very welcome all the same and offers us mixed views on how good Martin O’Neill is while predicting we’ll be beaten by Villa but finish seventh, tipping England for the World Cup final and rebuking us for the random choice of Ashley Young’s name for the Eduardo question because Young has never cheated in his life …
Villa seem to be doing the business this season. Has your time come again at last?
I think that that Villa have got back to ways of old and before I was born! Which is good, as there is a buzzing atmosphere around VP and a real expectation that we are going to win rather than lose!
It’s also real exciting times at VP with the Carling Cup Semis amongst us for the first time since 2004 (When we were cheated out of it by Bolton Wanderers and a real expectation almost of at least one trip to Wembley and maybe even Champions League action next year!
What do you do after seeing Sunderland throw away two points against lowly Portsmouth? Go home and kick the cat, start a few rows, reduce yourself to watching Stacey kicked out of the National Karaoke Championships? At least
Pete Sixsmith had some musical therapy lined up …
I’m very pleased that I have had 18 hours or so to mull over this , as if I had written it straight after the game, Bill Taylor would have been even more worried about my pessimistic bent, while Jon would have been much happier with the use of short, pithy words like “c***”, “s****” and “r*******”.
Eighteen hours later, after a most enjoyable evening spent in the company of England’s finest folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson at The Davy Lamp Folk Club in Washington, things look bleak, but not as bleak as they did at 6pm on Saturday.
They’re cock-a-hoop after winning at Old Trafford. We’re down in the dumps after a draw that, as Steve Bruce admitted, felt like a defeat. Pete Sixsmith has yet to deliver his considered verdict but his post-match seven-worder – A horrible game that exposed our weaknesses” – gives you an idea of what he thinks.
Many Salut! Sunderland readers have already seen the second instalment of our Villa previews. A technical hitch meant it was briefly live on Saturday – even before Sunderland’s lamentable surrender of two points aginst Pompey; it was quickly removed but this the link could still be seen at newsnow.com and worked.
But back to plan A: over in the States, Dominic Wren*, discovered via the VillaTalk fan site, is a PE teacher and “soccer” coach (he probably means football). So a few press-ups with the Salut! Sunderland questionnaire – he’s originally from Dorset, the product of Villa-supporting Brummies – hardly brought him out in a sweat. Oh, and Dominic, pictured with John Carew, thinks Villa will beat us 2-1 on Tuesday night …
Salut! Sunderland: Villa seem to be doing the business this season. Has your time come again at last?
No, we’re back where we belong in terms of modern EPL, in the mix amongst the big boys, we still need more creativity (who doesn’t!) to trouble the top four consistently.
Sunderland v Portsmouth. Was a top vs bottom clash. Now looks an awful lot more nervy an encounter …
After an appalling run on the road, Sunderland have managed to turn what should have been a routine staging post on our cruise up the table into a crucial must-win sort of game.
And what happens? Pompey fans are salivating at the prospect of three away points they think are theirs for the taking as they look to their players to exploit our deepening injury and suspension crisis.
Of course it couldn’t last, the English and the Irish united against an injustice suffered by the latter but felt, too, by the former. Shane Breslin, who presides over the lively craic at Ireland’s eleven-a-side football site, draws attention to his thoughts on the “triumphalism” of English reaction to the World Cup draw. All enough, he suggests, to bring the Irish to their senses and quickly drop France as pantomime enemies because the English were, are and always will be the real thing. Shane’s a good lad, much liked at Salut! Sunderland (which generally has little time for internationals anyway). But he is guilty of disregarding both widespread English support for the Irish cause in Paris and also the fact that the reaction he criticises was more a press thing than an English thing. Build ’em up, then knock ’em down and, once they’re there, give ’em a good kicking. This is his piece. See what you think (and pop over to his site to check the mixed response there)…
England’s first potential stumbling-block will be Brazil in the semi-finals. That’s how one newspaper reacted to the World Cup draw at the weekend, nicely doing its bit to restore the old enemy to its rightful place.
I don’t want to be xenophobic here – we all know the English do that better than anyone – but the reaction to Friday evening’s World Cup draw from our neighbours reminds us that they will soon replace France as our chief enemies once more.
As far as Salut! Sunderland is concerned, the Portsmouth fan known as Equinox* first surfaced in early 2008, when he answered the call via the Pompey online site to preview a game at Fratton Park. All the way from the south coast to a site for fans of a North-eastern club? Not quite. Our guest began: “Equinox lives in East Boldon. Yes that’s right, East Boldon, just a gnat’s wing away from your beloved SoL.” Living in the North East since 1989, he offered a spell prosecuting at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court as a good reason for an alias. Those days are gone, but he feels it is prudent to remain anonymous, the long arm of the outlaw being what it is. So what does Equinox think about the present turmoil at Pompey, and Saturday’s important game at our place? …
Salut! Sunderland: You have said Pompey is not a happy place. Leaving aside the Carling Cup (oops: Villa won 4-2) and last Saturday’s nice easy home game (vs Burnley, 2-0), you had a nightmare start, some green shoots and then another slump. What has gone wrong and has anything started to go right?
I think that it is fair to say that the stuffing has been knocked out of us, you can insert any similar phrase involving kicking and four colours if you want. Imagine being punched really hard in the guts and that’s how we feel. There have been stories, rumours, counter-rumours since Spring of this year and when you add that into actual factual happenings it really does look as if we are almost bankrupt and without a team. And then in steps Paul Hart who builds a team out of nothing, and, to be fair it probably isn’t the worst team tat the Premiership has seen but they had no pre-season and for a time at least, no wages. The past owner young master Gaydamak apparently said to the Chief exec that he didn’t care if we went into administration and then a feud started – Gaydamak ended up selling to the only skint arab in the village whose media pronouncements verged from the ridiculous to the downright mental.
And then we had all the bad luck going. In the first few games, deflected goals, very dodgy decisions, injuries you name it. And through it all Hart had to carry on trying to mould the team out of his rag bag of players. Personally I think he did well but there is no time in this league if your luck runs out…………….ours never ran out, it never actually started.