Colin Randall

Salut! Sunderland was edited by Colin Randall up until December 2019 - read more

The Leeds United Who are You?: ‘top six for us and SAFC’

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Kevin Ayscough with a miniature Leeds fan, his grandson Charlie

You’ll need to scroll down now if you want to know Kevin Ayscough‘s* link to Salut! Sunderland and why he thinks a certain Sunderland fan ought really be supporting Leeds.

Kevin is a down-to-earth United supporter who sees no point in harking back to his club’s glory days, though he says he still cannot work out how we made his trip home to Leeds such a miserable one on May 5 1973. He rates Simon Grayson highly and, even before this week’s results put us 6th and Leeds 7th, saw both clubs finishing in the top six – a re-run of 1963-64 would suit him and most of us, even if we’d want the positions reversed ….

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Sixer’s Sevens: Sheffield Wednesday 1-1 Sunderland. Tough going after missed chances

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Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

Pete Sixsmith‘s instant seven-word verdicts on Sunderland games are part of the staple diet of Salut! Sunderland. If he is not present, the supersub’s snap judgement is preceded by an asterisk. Tonight, he was indeed present as George Honeyman gave us an early lead, Grabban and Vaughan missed good chances to extend it and after conceding a seemingly inevitable equaliser (David Jones’s top quality 25-yard strike described by Sixer as ‘an absolute worldie‘), we ended up fighting a desperate but ultimately successful battle to hang on for a point …

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Sheffield Wednesday vs SAFC: maintaining the good start would transform our prospects

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Comes courtesy of the Twitter pages of our Sheffield Wednesday ‘Who are You?’ interviewee, Dave Briggs

Not many people, and Sunderland supporters must be included in this, honestly believed Simon Grayson capable of leading an immediate push for promotion.

Starved of funds, even those generated by big-money sales or savings on wages, and not even the club’s first choice to replace David Moyes, he was at best seen as a sound Championship manager who would probably secure a a top-half sort of season. A playoff spot was not impossible but a big ask on the shoestring budget he had been handed.

But a decent start, drawing and almost beating Derby County before a good win at Norwich, with progress in the League Cup in between, has prompted some re-thinking.

If you think Sunderland for promotion is worth a wager, perhaps you should start expecting the odds to shorten. We’ll leave it to you to take a look at such places as NetBet Sport for an idea of how others assess our chances in a cooler, more professional way than a partisan site can manage.

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough

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Sixer now …
as was, albeit a frw years back on a Ferryhill school trip to Paris

Mr Sixsmith – Pete or Sixer to most – has sternly corrected Monsieur Salut. The series is not to be passed off as The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team regardless of context; it’s Ground if we’re playing them away, Team if it’s at the Stadium of Light. So this latest edition is TFTEISYG and emphatically not TFTEISYT. Fine writers, eh? So precious.

But Sixer can be excused all preciousness. This is a wonderful series that cries out for a proper publisher (anyone listening out there?). And once aain he packs history, humour and personal reminiscence to come up with a winner …

 

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Sixer’s Norwich Soapbox: Players are showing commitment to the club and to the support

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Pete Sixsmith then (as in not so long ago)

John McCormick writes: Pete Sixsmith has finally made it home from seat U2 in the Carrow Road football stadium (hence the reference in the introduction to Saturday’s Sevens).  He probably has just enough time to grab some rest before he heads off to Sheffield. But before he gets his head down here he is with the heads up on a game more than a few of us expected to be difficult.

As ever, it’s a fine piece of writing. The bonus is that this time it’s about an excellent Sunderland performance:

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Sheffield Wednesday Who are You?: from dreading Portsmouth’s fate to good times again

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Dave Briggs: aiming high

Dave Briggs* is a Sheffield Wednesday fan who has seen good times, wretched times and better times. The good times presumably included seven years deejaying in Greece.

Last season’s playoff final defeat was a bitter disappointment but he relished the challenge for promotion after so much underachievement in recent years. Dave thinks we may need to be patient, too, and should not be too downbeat if we cannot make the top six at the first attempt. And he rather likes the three Owls players – Steven Fletcher, Keiren Westwood and Ross Wallace – with SAFC connections …

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Sheffield Wednesday vs Sunderland Guess the Score: extending Grayson’s run?

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Photo comes courtesy of our Who are You? Owl Dave Briggs’s Twitter account

 

Pete Sixsmith had a long trek home from East Anglia yesterday. I bet the fish and chips tasted especially good at Wetherby after a fine 3-1 win. We’ll doubtless hear from him some time day – his report of the match, and his travels leading up to it, is eagerly awaited. In the meantime, start thinking about Wednesday and Wednesday, the third league match of the season …

Matches come thick and fast when you drop to the Championship and we already have three winners of Guess the Score waiting patiently for their prize mugs. Since Paul Devinbe (1-1 vs Derby),  Phil Davison (1-0 to Bury and Eric Bowers (3-1 vs Norwich) are regulars on the podium, they’ll know Monsieur Salut can sometimes be slow to get round to having the prizes shipped out.

Don’t let my tardiness put you off telling us how the Lads will get on at Hillsborough after a promising start under Simon Grayson.

As usual, the competition is open to all supporters, Sheffield Wednesday’s, ours and indeed neutrals. Be first to post the correct scoreline before kickoff and you will receive a mug (UK delivery only) with a design reflecting your allegiance.

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Sixers Sevens: Norwich have all the possession, we score all the goals

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Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

Pete Sixsmith took his time in getting to Norwich, so we can look forward to an account of his ground-hopping as well as a match report from U2 at Carrow Road, where the seats have no name. (and perhaps Pete will include an explanation of what this means with his report**).

For now, though, we’ll have to make do with the instant, seven word verdict that he sends to M Salut immediately after the final whistle, and doesn’t it make a nice change from what he was sending last season? …

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Norwich Who are You?: ‘we couldn’t even cheat properly, but watch Fulham!’

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Gary Gowers

Towards the end of the 2015-2016 season, Sunderland went to Norwich and won 3-0 as part of the Big Sam race for survival. We stayed up, they went down. Before the game, we were able to introduce readers to one of the best Who are You? interviewees of the season, Gary Gowers*. So good were his replies that he took second place in the HAWAY awards – he never received his prize, but we are trying to rectify this now.

As Sunderland’s second Championship game takes us back to Carrow Road, it seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up again with Gary, the editor of http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com. Sit back for another terrific read in which he lays into the arrogance of City’s squad last season and expresses no surprise at our own predicament. He’d quite like Catts in Norwich colours but is distinctly cool on James Vaughan and Lewis Grabban. All the same, he predicts a top six place for Sunderland (and for his own side) …

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