Salut! Sunderland tends to avoid, when it has its thinking cap on, such phrases as ‘must-win game’. It has become one of the more irritating of footballing cliches, on a par with the inability of newspapers and broadcasters to abstain from referring to people who ‘cannot be named for legal reasons’, which is among the more irritating of journalistic cliches (there’s usually just the one reason, one that can easily be shared with readers).
I don’t think Micky Gray used “must-win” while I was listening to him on TalkSport this morning but the presenter, Jim White certainly did. And we know where we’ll be if we manage yet again to lose …
Here, anyway, are a few questions and answers with the Bolton fan site Burnden Aces to reciprocate its help in finding us a Who are You? candidate. I felt a bit of a fraud since my first match of this season is not until Boro at the weekend but the questions arrived too late for me to ask Pete Sixsmith, who suffers more than most, to do the honours. But like all exiled or partly exiled SAFC fans, I keep in touch as best I can, aided and abetted by Barnes and Benno and, of course, the mighty if slimmed-down Sixer …
Jake: ‘one win won’t transform our season but heaven knows it’d be a nice change’
Amid all the dross that flows from sportsmen given media platforms, without or perhaps usually with the aid of ghostwriters, a refreshingly incisive summing-up of the awful decline of Sunderland AFC appears in the Sunderland Echo column of Gary Rowell.
This hero of Sunderland’s history – his proudest moment as a player for the club he also supported came with that hat-trick at St James’ Park in 1979 – needed just a couple of sentences tochart the slump since Big Sam led the side to rousing, season-saving home wins, with three goals apiece against Chelsea and then Everton.
Gabe John is our young Bolton Wanderers supporter in the Who are You? interview suite (aka an e-mail exchange). He writes for Burnden Aces, with which fan site we are happy to make re-acquaintance though unhappy for the reason why … and like all supporters of teams we face at the Stadium of Light, he expects Bolton to win on Tuesday night …
John McCormick writes: if you’re old, like myself, Monsieur Salut, Malcolm and Pete Sixsmith, Bolton Wanderers will probably be there or thereabouts in your memories. They are a proper club, with a proper history and I’ve no doubt they fired the imagination of a lot of youngsters in that long ago era of dubbin, casies and nailed-in studs. We haven’t shared much of that history, however, as we’ve tended to rise as Bolton Wanderers have fallen and vice versa, as Pete explains below:
Jake: ‘what could be simpler than beating the bottom club at home?’
Monsieur Salut writes: it is a telling feature of Sunderland’s predicament that away fans, naturally talking up their teams’ expectations, are correctly predicting the results of games at the Stadium of Light.
So far, the Bolton Wanderers Who are You? has not landed. I have no idea what the man in the hot seat, Gabe John, from the fan site Burnden Aces, will forecast.
Chris Mann, who runs the site, may have been trying to humour us when I suggested he must be feeling upbeat about Tuesday night. “More a sense of pessimism,” Chris replied. “We didn’t win away all season when we were relegated and yet to do so on the road this season – despite coming ever so close yesterday. Your winless home run is no match for our 32 without a Championship away win, so not feeling too optimistic.”
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Footballers earning a great deal of money turned out at the Stadium of Light on Saturday afternoon and, yet again, let down the supporters who, earning a great deal less, help to pay their wages. A manager, also earning very good money, chose the team, the tactics, the substitutions … so he, too, let down the fans.
John McCormick writes: half an hour in and my hopes of a mug were dashed. And though we continued our scoring run and equalised we also continued our home hoodoo and lost to a second-half goal.
Will that cost our manager his job? Pete Sixsmith’s seven word text, straight on the final whistle, suggests it should.
John McCormick writes: Like Pete Sixsmith, I can’t remember a lot of matches against Bristol City (or Rovers for that matter). I’m pretty sure I was at the 6-1 win in ’64 but the only game which sticks in my mind is there because of an overnight trip on a Tennick bus and a team sheet that included Joe Baker. I remembered it as a cup match but when I looked it up on the Statcat website it wasn’t. It can only have been the season-opening 4-3 loss that Pete mentions below, and nothing to do with the cup, so I saw an opening day 7 goal thriller which included Joe Baker netting two of the 12 goals he scored for us, plus a last minute heartbreaker, and I can’t remember it. I blame the drink.
Back to Pete, and let’s be thankful he has a better memory than me:
Circumstances have kept Pete Lynn, our Wrinkly one, away from Sunderland games so far this season. He has not been boycotting the club, as he explains below. On Saturday, he makes his long-awaited debut as Simon Grayson once again tries to end a dismal winless run, against Bristol City at the Stadium of Light. Pete has already supplied an excellent candidate for Who are You?, his Bristol-supporting nephew doing …
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
What do the following three sporting institutions have in common – Sunderland AFC, Warwickshire County Cricket Club and Solihull Moors AFC?
Colin Randall 
