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Soapbox: Pompey pain

December 13, 2009 by Colin Randall

What do you do after seeing Sunderland throw away two points against lowly Portsmouth? Go home and kick the cat, start a few rows, reduce yourself to watching Stacey kicked out of the National Karaoke Championships? At least Pete Sixsmith had some musical therapy lined up …

I’m very pleased that I have had 18 hours or so to mull over this , as if I had written it straight after the game, Bill Taylor would have been even more worried about my pessimistic bent, while Jon would have been much happier with the use of short, pithy words like “c***”, “s****” and “r*******”.

Eighteen hours later, after a most enjoyable evening spent in the company of England’s finest folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson at The Davy Lamp Folk Club in Washington, things look bleak, but not as bleak as they did at 6pm on Saturday.

Who are you? We’re Aston Villa (1)

December 13, 2009 by Colin Randall

They’re cock-a-hoop after winning at Old Trafford. We’re down in the dumps after a draw that, as Steve Bruce admitted, felt like a defeat. Pete Sixsmith has yet to deliver his considered verdict but his post-match seven-worder – A horrible game that exposed our weaknesses” – gives you an idea of what he thinks.

Many Salut! Sunderland readers have already seen the second instalment of our Villa previews. A technical hitch meant it was briefly live on Saturday – even before Sunderland’s lamentable surrender of two points aginst Pompey; it was quickly removed but this the link could still be seen at newsnow.com and worked.

But back to plan A: over in the States, Dominic Wren*, discovered via the VillaTalk fan site, is a PE teacher and “soccer” coach (he probably means football). So a few press-ups with the Salut! Sunderland questionnaire – he’s originally from Dorset, the product of Villa-supporting Brummies – hardly brought him out in a sweat. Oh, and Dominic, pictured with John Carew, thinks Villa will beat us 2-1 on Tuesday night …

Salut! Sunderland: Villa seem to be doing the business this season. Has your time come again at last?

No, we’re back where we belong in terms of modern EPL, in the mix amongst the big boys, we still need more creativity (who doesn’t!) to trouble the top four consistently.

Up against a cocky-sounding Pompey, where’s Joe Bolton when you need him?

December 11, 2009 by Colin Randall

Sunderland v Portsmouth. Was a top vs bottom clash. Now looks an awful lot more nervy an encounter …

After an appalling run on the road, Sunderland have managed to turn what should have been a routine staging post on our cruise up the table into a crucial must-win sort of game.

And what happens? Pompey fans are salivating at the prospect of three away points they think are theirs for the taking as they look to their players to exploit our deepening injury and suspension crisis.

Sunderland’s Irish friends: remembering the true enemy – or green with envy?

December 10, 2009 by Colin Randall

Of course it couldn’t last, the English and the Irish united against an injustice suffered by the latter but felt, too, by the former. Shane Breslin, who presides over the lively craic at Ireland’s eleven-a-side football site, draws attention to his thoughts on the “triumphalism” of English reaction to the World Cup draw. All enough, he suggests, to bring the Irish to their senses and quickly drop France as pantomime enemies because the English were, are and always will be the real thing. Shane’s a good lad, much liked at Salut! Sunderland (which generally has little time for internationals anyway). But he is guilty of disregarding both widespread English support for the Irish cause in Paris and also the fact that the reaction he criticises was more a press thing than an English thing. Build ’em up, then knock ’em down and, once they’re there, give ’em a good kicking. This is his piece. See what you think (and pop over to his site to check the mixed response there)…

England’s first potential stumbling-block will be Brazil in the semi-finals. That’s how one newspaper reacted to the World Cup draw at the weekend, nicely doing its bit to restore the old enemy to its rightful place.

I don’t want to be xenophobic here – we all know the English do that better than anyone – but the reaction to Friday evening’s World Cup draw from our neighbours reminds us that they will soon replace France as our chief enemies once more.

Who are you? We’re Portsmouth

December 9, 2009 by Colin Randall

As far as Salut! Sunderland is concerned, the Portsmouth fan known as Equinox* first surfaced in early 2008, when he answered the call via the Pompey online site to preview a game at Fratton Park. All the way from the south coast to a site for fans of a North-eastern club? Not quite. Our guest began: “Equinox lives in East Boldon. Yes that’s right, East Boldon, just a gnat’s wing away from your beloved SoL.” Living in the North East since 1989, he offered a spell prosecuting at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court as a good reason for an alias. Those days are gone, but he feels it is prudent to remain anonymous, the long arm of the outlaw being what it is. So what does Equinox think about the present turmoil at Pompey, and Saturday’s important game at our place? …

Salut! Sunderland: You have said Pompey is not a happy place. Leaving aside the Carling Cup (oops: Villa won 4-2) and last Saturday’s nice easy home game (vs Burnley, 2-0), you had a nightmare start, some green shoots and then another slump. What has gone wrong and has anything started to go right?

I think that it is fair to say that the stuffing has been knocked out of us, you can insert any similar phrase involving kicking and four colours if you want. Imagine being punched really hard in the guts and that’s how we feel. There have been stories, rumours, counter-rumours since Spring of this year and when you add that into actual factual happenings it really does look as if we are almost bankrupt and without a team. And then in steps Paul Hart who builds a team out of nothing, and, to be fair it probably isn’t the worst team tat the Premiership has seen but they had no pre-season and for a time at least, no wages. The past owner young master Gaydamak apparently said to the Chief exec that he didn’t care if we went into administration and then a feud started – Gaydamak ended up selling to the only skint arab in the village whose media pronouncements verged from the ridiculous to the downright mental.

And then we had all the bad luck going. In the first few games, deflected goals, very dodgy decisions, injuries you name it. And through it all Hart had to carry on trying to mould the team out of his rag bag of players. Personally I think he did well but there is no time in this league if your luck runs out…………….ours never ran out, it never actually started.

History lesson: the game that left Toon feeling doon

December 8, 2009 by Colin Randall

During Sunderland’s recent spell of post-Arsenal under-achievement, Newcastle have been recording wins against mighty opposition to stay top of the division that isn’t the Premier. And letting us know about how big a club they are. Time to cheer ourselves up, remind others of their place and – just three days late – celebrate a heartening 101st anniversary. Adapted from an article written by Colin Randall a year ago for The National, Abu Dhabi …

No member of the Toon Army thanked me this time last year for drawing wider attention to the centenary of one of the most momentous league games in English football history.

But then, Newcastle fans would probably feel disinclined to thank me for anything.

All the same, duty obliges me to record that 101 years ago last weekend, having made the short journey to Newcastle, Sunderland did not so much beat the Magpies as pulverise them

Soapbox: crestfallen at Craven Cottage

December 7, 2009 by Colin Randall

You have been warned. Pete Sixsmith has been in better moods. Sunderland-supporting readers of a sensitive disposition may wish to lock themselves into a small padded room and listen to the collected works of Jedward. If you’re built of stronger stuff, this is Pete’s verdict on a Sunday by the Thames made so dismal by Steve Bruce’s dunces that he wishes he’d stayed in the White Horse and ordered a £9 pint of Thomas Hardy ale. What on earth did Niall Quinn’s guest, Martina Navratilova, make of it? …

As I dragged myself from a warm bed this morning, still groggy after a long journey back from the latest away shambles, I heard the BBC newsreader say that the Government were worried about an increase in depression and anxiety.

One way to prevent this malaise among the red and white army, I snorted, would be to teach defenders to attack the ball when it is punted into the penalty box.

Prepare for a blasting after Fulham horror show

December 7, 2009 by Colin Randall

Another away game, another display lacking in guile and (in the first half) even commitment. For the first time, one or two fans are beginning to mutter that phrase: relegation dogfight. That may be an exaggeration; surely all the promise from good performances at home and heroics at Old Trafford cannot have evaporated. Yet Sunderland at Fulham – maintaining the standard of Sunderland at Stoke, Burnley, Birmingham and Wigan – were about as attractive as the back end of the Don Wood’s bus from Murton that I was stuck behind in the west London traffic jam after the match …

Expect a roasting for Sunderland when Pete Sixsmith delivers his Soapbox sermon later today.

The first half was an insult to the marvellous travelling support. The second half, for all our bluster, lacked serious quality in any of the areas of the pitch where it mattered. We never looked like scoring from the half chances that came our way and ended the game pegged in our own half without the least promise of an undeserved equaliser.

How to beat Fulham (the longer answer than ‘score more goals’))

December 4, 2009 by Colin Randall

Let us hope our wish was granted and that beating Sofia 1-0 softened Fulham up. In a detailed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of our Sunday opponents, based on watching the Fulham game before Sofia, a fellow subscriber to the Blackcats list, Jim Minton, gives us hope that we can do something about our atrocious away form – but also warns about the minefields. He is less forthcoming on the subject of Korean karaoke …

It was my dubious pleasure to watch Fulham v Bolton last weekend in the company of a group of gentlemen who thought it would be a good idea to kick off a stag weekend watching Clint Dempsey slugging it out against Gavin McCann from the corporate boxes at Craven Cottage.

Anyway, rather than digressing into tales of late night karaoke in a Korean bar in Soho and how my rendition of Since You’ve Been Gone came to cruelly curtailed for public health reasons – which is how the stag weekend ended – I thought I’d offer my thoughts on our opponents for Sunday.

Who are you? We’re Fulham (but we’re not Lily Allen)

December 3, 2009 by Colin Randall

To be honest, we were torn. Lily Allen or Roger Meloy to preview this Sunday’s game at Fulham, Steve Bruce’s latest attempt to prove to the world that Sunderland can perform on the road. Turning up at all would be an encouraging start. Anyway, Salut! Sunderland is not a site to be easily impressed by stardom so Lily was out (a choice made easier by an instant brush-off from her supPress Office). So, you’ll have to make do with her 2010 calendar, a sample from a recently published Observer interview about her football passion** – and, all the way from the USA, the thoughts of Roger*, the Cincinnati Kid and member of the Fuham Exiles fan site …

Salut! Sunderland: Comfortable last season, some good results so far but a little inconsistent. A fair summary of Fulham?

A fair summary. Getting into the Europa League was a major achievement for Fulham, but with our small squad this could come back and bite us later on in the season as we’ve played a midweek game virtually every week. Our biggest problem is still our away form. We have trouble picking up points from poor teams, such as losing at Wolves and Birmingham, drawing at Wigan and West Ham. Although, the 2-2 at Man. City was a good result considering we were 0-2 down.