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Ipswich Town vs Sunderland: would a win silence the doubters?

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Jake: ‘the mean sod has withdrawn the prize for this week’

Football fans are not known especially for their powers of measured reflection, that ability to take a realistic view rather than jump in at the first opportunity with both feet raised. Or so says Monsieur Salut.

Accordingly, the Ross Out chorus has begun. We’ve played all of one game. There are 45 to go in the league alone. We played badly by all accounts and questions have been raised about the team selection. All the same, as I said at Twitter while acknowledging that disdain for the manager is not purely a kneejerk reaction to the opening-day failure to beat modest opposition, calling for his head now is the sort of thing that takes us into laughing stock territory.

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Ipswich fans. Your chance to tell us all about yourselves – and Sunderland

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Jake: ‘a good one to win’

A couple of responses from Oxford fans ahead of Sunderland’s opening game hardly counts as a storming start to the labour-saving device of inviting opposing fans to send their thoughts on forthcoming matches between our clubs.

But let’s persevere, says Monsieur Salut. We’ve had good Ipswich Town Q+A interviews in the past and must hope a few Tractor Boys (or girls) feel inclined to answer one or more, or indeed all, of the questions below.

If this lazy version of our superb Who are You? series works, there’ll be the usual prizes at the end of the season for the best interviews. We’ll see …

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Sixer’s Sevens: Oxford set the scene for the season

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Sixer keeping cool

John McCormick writes: I was surprised at that line-up and wonder how much it had to do with match fitness. Whatever the reason, the performance in the first half will have given Jack Ross some food for thought. Still, a point is better than nowt, as my granny never said. But myself, Pete Sixsmith, who was at the match whereas I wasn’t, and Jake all have the same dread thought. “is that single point a harbinger of another long grind and an unforgiving season?”
We’ll have a better idea after tomorrow, when Pete has had time to compose a more considered opinion. For now you’ll have to do with the seven word text he sent winging over flood-threatened valleys and a forlorn Bury in order to brighten your evening:

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Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Peterborough, Rotherham and Doncaster – the League One top six?

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John McCormick,  writes: our ‘who to follow’ poll remained quiet, although the trickle of votes that came in over the last week did result in some changes. Sunderland and Portsmouth are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Ipswich, Rotherham and Peterborough. Then come Doncaster, who edged ahead of Coventry, followed at a distance by Lincoln and Burton.

I did expect Blackpool to do better but our site appears to have attracted few of their fans. Their season tickets had reached 4,818, when I last checked, so there’s obviously life returning to this once-troubled club. That’s about twice the number sold by Coventry, whose own troubles are nowhere being resolved and who slipped out of our top six after Doncaster Rovers gained a few votes. A third troubled club, Bolton Wanderers, who might or might not be sold by the time this post goes live, also didn’t do too badly and finished in the top half of the table. I don’t know how they’ll do that with only 7 first team players but what do I know about football?

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Sunderland vs Oxford United: the sound of silence

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Jake: let’s get off to a winning start


Well that went down well. Our cheeky attempt to draw some thoughts from Oxford United supporters ahead of Saturday’s opening League One game at the Stadium of Light, fell on deaf ears.

Charlie Methven, Sunderland executive director but also a fervent Oxford United fan, has spoken on these pages of the passion his fellow supporters feel for their club. So we will give it one more try. If you support Oxford and feel like answering one or more of the questions below, just post a comment and specify the number/s of the question/s (one to seven) to which you are responding …

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Pete Sixsmith, George Honeyman, wonderstrikes, and many points to ponder

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Pete Sixsmith writes: I have been dormant since that gut wrenching, heart breaking, anger inducing last minute defeat to Charlton, a game which showed that we were not good enough over 46 league games or over 90 minutes, two observations that were as worrying as they were disappointing.

Subsequently, I paid little attention to and took little interest in what was going on in the football world, a world that for many seems only to exist at Eastlands, Old Trafford, Anfield, Stamford Bridge, Ashburton Grove and White Hart Lane. Or, if you are a Newcastle United supporter, outside of a Sports Direct shop where you can shout rude things about the owner.

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Sunderland vs Oxford, goals (secretly) galore and a fond farewell from Bryan Oviedo

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The goals we wanted finally came – and no fans were there to witness them, says Monsieur Salut. Our new striker Marc McNulty grabbed a confidence-boosting hat-trick and one apiece from Aiden McGeady and Chris Maguire gave Sunderland a 5-2 win over Hartlepool.

I could find no trace of this on the club site – the game was played in private (behind closed doors seems a daft phrase when applied to the Academy of Light) – but you’ll find a brief account at the Sunderland Echo site.

And now – while bidding farewell to Bryan Oviedo, off the payroll with a move to the Danish top-flight side FC Copenhagen (he goes with our thanks and good wishes, reciprocated above) – on to the real business. Tell us how you think SAFC will fare in Saturday’s League One opener against Oxford United.

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An invitation to Oxford United supporters ahead of the League One opener at Sunderland

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It began more than 11 years ago as Who are They? and evolved quickly into Who are You?, Salut Sunderland‘s series of interviews with fans of each of Sunderland’s opposing clubs. We’ve had the famous and the not-so-famous, creating a rich archive of often quite outstanding features. There have been few gaps and those that have occurred did so mostly because supporters who promised to answer our questions failed in the end, for whatever reasons, to deliver.

All good things come to an end, however. The business of finding willing fans, pinning them down and getting the interviews published can be complicated and is usually time-consuming. The resulting readership figures do not always justify our efforts or those of the interviewees.

We shall start this season with a rough-and-ready replacement. A shorter list of questions will be posted here before each game and the fans of each club due to face Sunderland will be invited to answer.

If the idea works, we will maintain the annual HAWAY (Highly Articulated Who Are You?) awards for the best sets of answers. If it doesn’t, it will be quietly dropped. Salut! Sunderland thanks the army of opposition fans who made the series something of which we and they can be reasonably proud.

And here are the questions for Oxford United fans. Don’t worry if your responses fail to appear as soon as sent; an anti-spam device means comments submitted by visitors who have not done so in the past are held briefly for moderation …

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