Colin Randall listens, watches, hopes from his bunker in France as the Lads go in at half time level after a steady but hardly exceptional first 45 minutes …
Latest: West Ham 1 SAFC – see footnote
Would it be entirely unfair to say that this has so far been a game for fans who find the minute-by-minute growth of grass interesting?
Does Sunderland’s recent good form suggest a real revival?
Can we really win two games on the trot?
Or was West Ham’s creditable point at Everton, despite claims elsewhere that they didn’t play well (I didn”t see it but would cheerfully take a draw at Goodison most seasons), the start of a run of their own?
There’s a plaice for us. It is at Wetherby and is therefore, or can be, on the way back from all the clubs we’ve played in the Premier this season, which will tomorrow include West Ham. To hear some people – our Pete Sixsmith among them – drool about it, you might even take a long detour on the way home from St James’ Park next season …
No more fish jokes for cod’s sake. But the mind wanders towards the winter of 2007, and the back and back-but-one rows of a bus in Jaipur, when two people of similar age got talking.
It wasn’t such a huge coincidence that both of us came from the North East because we were part of a tour group on a holiday in India booked through Hays Travel, Sunderland-based with branches all over the region.
France, Tuesday: Bordeaux went out of the Champions’ League tonight, beating Lyon 1-0 but losing 3-2 on aggregate. Salut! Sunderland …
Gnome’s had his say – not for the first time. Now it’s the turn of
Pete Sixsmith to recall his relief that paper round money didn’t stretch to a particular football outing to London in the year of the Prague Spring, Martin Luther King’s assassination, student and worker revolt in France – and West Ham 8 Sunderland 0 …
Once upon a time, I considered living and working in London. In the 1970s, the leftward leaning ILEA was offering houses, cars and probably caviar and champagne for any teachers brave enough to face the capital’s schools.
I seriously considered it and decided that if I did take the plunge, I would watch West Ham as my “London” team. They were similar to Sunderland – a working class club, although without the history and tradition that attached itself to Roker Park.
The build-up to Saturday’s game at Upton Park – can Sunderland actually win two in a row? – continues. Our guest Hammer, Gordon Thrower*, from the admirable West Ham site, Knees Up Mother Brown, has one personality defect: he cannot get October 19 1968 out of his mind. Sunderland fans of a nervous disposition should skip his recollections of the day our players felt such a sense of injustice at an opening goal from the hand of Geoff Hurst (correction: he said it was his fist) that they thought “why not concede a whole lot more?”. Gordon – some impertinent Hammers are speculating on which of the characters in the photo he might be – predicts another, more modest Hammers victory on Saturday …
Salut! Sunderland: Which West Ham greats did you watch play, and which do you regret being too young to have seen?
I’m lucky enough to have started during the Moore, Hurst and Peters era so I’ve pretty much seen all of our greatest players. There was an incredibly unlucky player called George Foreman who played for us well before I was born. Few would have heard of him, though he scored 154 goals in 156 games. Unfortunately his tenure at the club lasted from 1939-1946 and I believe that the country was a bit preoccupied with non-football matters for most of that time.
Gordon Thrower*, known as Gnome at Knees Up Mother Brown, the West Ham fan site he co-edits, has his hair cut by the same barber used by our own Michael Turner. We’re sure his hairdresser is careful with the scissors, but Gordon should have had a sore head when answering our questions: it was the day after his own leaving do.
Any chance he’ll be wanting to drown his sorrows again on Saturday night after West Ham v Sunderland? Whatever the outcome, Gordon is mightily welcome back here after his epic contribution a couple of seasons ago, Great answers so we’ll spread them over two days …
Salut! Sunderland: What on earth has gone wrong at your place?
How long have you got!? Lack of money meant a lack of squad depth which cost us dearly when the inevitable injuries happened. Then, once the club finally got sold, or half sold anyway, a lot of players showed an alarming loss of form all at the same time. Worryingly, this includes those players charged with the responsibility of creating and scoring goals.
It made only a paragraph in today’s edition of the Var Matin newspaper, and the text was limited to a mention of Nottingham Forest’s draw sending Newcastle United back up. In the North East,
Pete Sixsmith could hardly escape the fuss, but this evening finds him in deeply conciliatory spirits …
When I opened this morning’s Guardian Sport and saw the headline “We can take on the might of Europe”, I thought: “Here we go again. They’ve only been promoted for 10 hours and they’ve bloody well started.”
Here’s a team line-up with a difference: one man’s view of the worst players in the Premier League. One Sunderland regular, and one old boy, get nominations. The compiler gets an earful …
When a journalist runs out of things to say, he can always come up with a list. After all, Nick Hornby did it, over and again in High Fidelity, and made a fortune. So why not?
Justin Mottershead is a mature student in his final year of a journalism degree at City University London. He says he’s from Manchester and “obviously” loves United – the “obviously” is a little baffling to those of us who find the correlation not at all obvious – and his list is of the players he’d select for the Premier team from hell.
Pete Sixsmith was pulled up here by a Spurs fan (Telboy) for suggesting in his Observer match verdict that it could have ended Sunderland 6 Tottenham 1. What Telboy couldn’t have realised was the Pete also said it might have been 3-3 (that less sexy bit being cut out). We shouldn’t be greedy, but there’s no denying 6-1 was strictly speaking feasible (two missed pens, one disallowed goal) and would have been very nice indeed …
It crossed my mind to use “Broken nose Bruce slaughters Flannel faced ‘Arry” as my seven-word summary, but I felt this might upset the sensitivities of any passing Spurs fans, so decided on the more prosaic words you can find elsewhere on this site .
It was a wonderfully exciting game of football and if Ellis Short and Niall Quinn wanted to present any wavering renewers with a good reason for parting with a wad of money for next season, then this game provided perfect ammunition.