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Who are you? We’re Arsenal (and Barca, Brazil and Argentina!)

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arsenalv.hull


The tension is beginning to build. Sunderland have a strong strike force and, on paper, a semi-viable defence but no one knows quite how Steve Bruce will fashion a midfield from depleted ranks. Arsenal have problems, too, from injuries of their own to question marks over some of Arsène Wenger’s players (though Sod’s Law decrees that the hapless, fumbling Lukasz Fabianski would have a blinder if he played against us). We turned again to New York City and Fatima al Shamsi*, a rare Man City-loathing Emirati (above, left, with her sister Alyazhah), for a few more nuggets of wisdom from the world of gloryseeking Goonerworship. Fatima is charitable about SAFC, pragmatic about cheating, unladylike about Barcelona’s Ibrahimovic and restrained in her match forecast …


What about Arsenal’s season? Are you still right behind Arsène Wenger or do you feel you need someone else to move you on? I take it you’ve been following your Gunners from afar.

Unfortunately still watching them predominantly on my laptop although I have made a few trips to sports cafés whenever we’ve had an 11am kick off (NYC time). I like to be behind Arsene but our starting 11 against ManU was a horrible choice , although to be fair I’m not too sure what our alternative options could have been given the state of our injuries and such. I’m starting to get frustrated (about time too) but despite that, I still have faith in our crazy French man. What we do need is to get a decent experienced player to help pull the talent we already have all together – and I don’t count Sol Campbell as one, despite his goal against Porto this week. also more importantly we need to look into some decent goalkeepers neither Almunia nor Fabianski play convincingly enough to be part of a top team.

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Who are you? We’re Arsenal (and we’re right at the top!)

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emirates


How many Salut! Sunderland readers scroll down the right-hand sidebar and then click on Soccerlinks? If you do, you’ll know that since the technical glitch that put us in something like 565th place, we’ve climbed back up to the top 100 and, when things are busy here, get as high as 35th. For this week’s Who Are They? candidate, we went straight to the top of the charts to find Chris Borg*, whose site, The Gunning Hawk pulls in an average of more than 5,000 visitors daily. Chris makes it all sound so easy. Sunderland’s task in trying to avoid defeat at the Emirates on Saturday is a long way from easy. Is our only hope that Porto soften them up? …

So, an easy one to keep your slender title hopes alive. I take it you couldn’t have wished for any better fixture, after beating Liverpool to stay on course, than us at home …

On paper, it is an easy game but one not to be underestimated. After all, you’ve got Bent up there, third in the top scorer list and our backline has been pretty shaky in recent appearances.

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Good news, bad news ahead of the Emirates

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Lots of Arsenal fans were drawn into some great crack here over the weekend. Some of them said kind things, but they are probably all looking at this Saturday as a home banker. That sort of means we have nothing to lose. But there’s a lot of pride to play for after the recent dismal run, and no one turning out for us at the Emirates should do so without at least the hope in his heart of pulling off a result …

Confirmation that Jordan Henderson is out for six weeks – not three as I believed from one earlier report – is unwelcome in that his absence, added to Andy Reid’s injury, robs us of most of what little midfield creativity we seem to possess.

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Arsenal still a week away, this is as good as it gets

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haway

What is it about a weekend without a Sunderland game that makes life seem good? Answers on postcards please. It’s made Colin Randall feel so good that he is taking leave of his senses and working himself into an implausibly optimistic frenzy about Arsenal away a week from now. He’s taken a pill and should be better soon …

Some great answers arrived today from the Arsenal fan who is previewing next week’s game at the Emirates for Salut! Sunderland.

“On paper an easy game – but not one to be underestimated,” is how he puts it. Come back a few days from now to see what else he has to say about us and them, but that seemed a remarkably kind – or diplomatic – summary of the how the match is likely to turn out.

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Websites and parasites: fighting back

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rat trap

No game this weekend – though we should, of course, have been playing Southampton in the FA Cup – so it seems the right time to deal with a spot of necessary admin: how to combat a scourge of the internet age …


Salut! Sunderland, and its sister sites Salut! , Salut! Live and Salut! North, have been infested by an ugly, virulent pest called the website parasite.

The aim of the people posting comments which appear at first glance to be genuine, but can quickly be seen to be bogus and probably generated by computers, is to produce artificially inflated stats for visits to their own, usually unrelated sites or promote Viagra, medicines or whatever else they are trying to flog.

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Soapbox: a sign of the times

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soapbox

In a more innocent age, people often felt flattered when approached for autographs, to the extent of finding a bit of space on the final page and writing silly rhymes likes “by hook or by crook, I’ll be last in this book”. These days, it seems, it is a chore to be avoided whenever possible. Salut! Sunderland can see that footballers may regard autograph hunters are annoying, trainspotterish oiks. But Pete Sixsmith argues that it doesn’t actually take a long time out of their lives to oblige young admirers

As if things were not bad enough …

A dismal mid season could well herald yet another relegation scrap. There is animated discussion amongst the fans about whether Bruce should go to the library with the pearl handled revolvers and do the decent thing. It appears the camp is split between the underachievers brought in by Keane and those attracted to the club by Bruce. And now……..

We have players who are non-signers.

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West Ham’s pay cut saga: the way forward for us too?

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mickey


David Sullivan’s warning that everyone at West Ham, the club he now co-owns, faced a 25 per cent pay cut did no harm to the players’ mood, the Hammers dismissing Birmingham City with a minimum of fuss to put more pressure on us at the bottom of the Premier. As our own aversion to winning gathers strength, we wonder whether there might be a lesson in this for Niall Quinn and Ellis Short …


Two stories about Sunderland and full backs tell us a lot about the nature of football.

Mickey Gray was a decent if unspectacular SAFC player, admired both for being a local lad made good and for the exciting partnership he forged down the left flank with Allan “Magic” Johnston. He is remembered less admiringly for his woeful penalty miss in the Charlton play-off final in 1998, and for a restaurant altercation with Wayne Rooney.

As everyone who supports Sunderland probably knows, he also won a star prize for insensitivity when, on the day several members of the SAFC staff were laid off because of the team’s failures on the field, he arrived for training in his gleaming new Ferrari.

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Portsmouth 1 Sunderland 1: sorry Niall, sorry Steve

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Another game against lowly opposition, another failure to show ourselves to be in a different class. Colin Randall endures last-ditch heartbreak – and a missed golden opportunity to win for a change – at Fratton Park

Sorry Niall, sorry Steve: if only you had taken the players on a pre-match inspection of the away end at Portsmouth last night: primitive toilets and catering, narrow steps and a shockingly congested exit path at the top of the stand …

It might have stopped them putting in another ultimately inadequate performance of the kind that threatens to lead us back to the Championship – where such conditions are the norm.

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