Colin Randall - SAFC Blog - Page 74 of 572

SAFC vs Hull City prize Guess the Score: the annual relegation scrap

January 16, 2018January 16, 2018 by Colin Randall

Jake: ‘have a go and just hope M Salut’s feeling generous if you win’

Oh dear, muses Monsieur Salut. The piece below was prepared before the Cardiff debacle. Will anyone be left to predict a Sunderland win? Will my absence on hols in Cuba coincide with the first entry-free Guess the Score (save for the Hull fan’s automatic one)? Or will blind faith triumph yet again? …

The first entry in this week’s edition of Guess the Score is, as a consequence of the rule introduced this season, taken. Kathryn Townsley is our Hull City interviewee for Who are You? and reckons her lot will win 2-1.

She also thinks, as you shall read tomorrow, that we may well go down but that Hull will not. That is the basis on which she feels confident that this is not going to the second of three fixtures between the same sides played in different divisions in successive seasons.

Wrinkly Pete says: to be or not to be a borrower, that is the question

January 15, 2018 by Colin Randall

John McCormick writes: It’s appropriate as we look towards Hull, well known Capital of Culture, that we get into the spirit with a contribution of our own. And who better to provide it than Wrinkly Pete.

Pete, via the Bard, poses an interesting question:

Has the loan system served us well, or not?

What do you think? Did Danny Rose get more from us than we got from him? What about Johnny Evans (got us up, kept us up)? And what of all of those others, up to and including Grabban? Or perhaps you might be thinking of loans out – Borini, Khazri and Lens spring to mind.

Pete’s not a fan of the loan system. In this post he makes his case and then we open the floor with a poll which gives you a chance to give us your opinion, after which you’re welcome to leave a comment. So without much ado,

“with mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”*

Sixer’s sub’s soapbox: Grounds for pessimism after Cardiff

January 14, 2018 by Colin Randall

Pete Sixsmith didn’t quite take the day off but the trip he made was a short one, only over the border to the next county.

It was Bob Chapman who crossed the border into another country.

Meanwhile, Sunderland appear to have only one place to go.

Here’s Bob’s report.

Hutch’s one-word ratings from Cardiff: hang your heads in shame Sunderland

January 13, 2018 by Colin Randall

Olivia Hutchison has done nothing to deserve the pain inflicted on her by Sunderland AFC when she goes with her dad, Rob, to games, mostly away since they live in the south. Last year, you’ll recall, she even jumped out of a plane to raise funds for the Bradley Lowery fund. Yet today she was obliged to watch in horror as SAFC produced a classic second-half surrender. ‘This might be a long journey back,’ said the text. ‘As bad as it gets? Certainly since Southampton.’ Her words? His words? Jointly composed? What followed were Rob’s one-word ratings .. not for the squeamish!

Sixer’s Sevens. Cardiff leave us singing the Blues

January 13, 2018January 13, 2018 by Colin Randall

John McCormick writes: I didn’t think Cardiff City were anything special yet they brushed us aside. So what does that make us?

Bob Chapman, standing in for Pete Sixsmith sent us his immediate post-match text and in just seven words, gives us something of an answer. An answer we didn’t want:

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: (part 2) Cardiff City and the Eponymous Stadium

January 13, 2018January 12, 2018 by Colin Randall

John McCormick writes: after 1971-2 it was another 30 years before I returned to Cardiff. This time I drove there and stayed in decent hotels (you know, the kind with heating and showers). Cardiff had changed from the solemn, somnolent city I remembered. Now it was full of partygoers engaging in drunkenness and sin.

But it wasn’t all improvement. There were yuppies, and Ninian Park, despite refurbishment, was showing its age.

It took another few years for City to get their new venue, as Pete Sixsmith relates in part two of Cardiff’s “first time ever I saw your ground…”

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: (part 1) Cardiff City’s Ninian Park

January 11, 2018 by Colin Randall

John McCormick writes: I made it down to Cardiff in 1971 or 2, via the Heads of the Valleys Road, one or more pubs in Aberdare and Tonypandy’s Pandy Inn, but in February 1972, where Pete resumes his travelogue, I was half-way through my undergraduate career and finding respite from academic life (mine involved the use of sterile mating in insect control) in five-a-side during the week and the pubs and depths of Yorkshire at the weekends*. Going to this game never entered my head. Luckily, it entered Pete Sixsmith‘s and he now begins a two-part edition of his outstanding series, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground

Cardiff City Who are You? ‘I wouldn’t write off Sunderland completely’

January 11, 2018January 10, 2018 by Colin Randall

Daniel Bevan: ‘sorry Lads, but we’ll beat you and you’re going down’

Daniel Bevan* – great Welsh name – is an aspiring sportswriter and broadcaster, the founder of the In Off The Post podcast and blog and an ardent Cardiff City supporter. He says he saw our current predicament coming to the extent that he predicted another relegation for Sunderland this season. He hasn’t changed his mind. And he thinks his Bluebirds will continue to fly high but not beyond a playoff position …

Cardiff vs Sunderland Guess the Score: are things going to get better?

January 10, 2018January 9, 2018 by Colin Randall

Jake: ‘try to think Norwich, Burton or Forest, Lads – not Barnsley, Ipswich, Sheff Utd’

Everyone knows we can do it. Sadly, everyone also knows what seems to happen each time we say as much.

So straight over to the Salut! Sunderland jury. Does the fight to scramble away from the bottom of the Championship start with a good result at Cardiff or is our plight about to get even worse?

A warm welcome to Jake Clarke-Salter. A slightly sour farewell to Lewis Grabban

January 9, 2018 by Colin Randall

Jake Clarke-Salter. Welcome and good luck. Image: by @cfcunofficial (Chelsea Debs) London (Aston Villa 0 Chelsea 4) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

We have been this way before. Early activity in a transfer window seems positive and our hopes rise accordingly, only to be dashed by a combination of factors: the questionable SAFC managerial merry-go-round, an imbalance of expectation and delivery and the air of thick gloom hanging over the club.

But Chris Coleman’s first move really does look like a sound one. Jake Clarke-Salter, a ball-playing central defender brought on loan from Chelsea, “is supposed to be rather good”, says a Chelsea-supporting friend.