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A trip to the comfortable environs of Finsbury Park has Pete Sixsmith all nostalgic for the proletarian terraces of Boundary Park and real football. His mood is not helped by Wenger’s usual churlish comments about Sunderland, but he takes heart from a disciplined and effective performance.

Twelve games left, 31 points on the board and we are inching towards safety and mid table respectability. Not the most exciting words ever written about football, but as we gathered another precious point, it sums up what we are all about at the moment.

Unfortunately for Professor Wenger and the bourgeois fans who inhabit the comfy seats at Ashburton Grove, we are not playing football the right way, by refusing to roll over and allow Arsenal to show off their silky attacking skills to the gathered aficionados sat there with their ciabatta rolls and their personalised shirts.

Instead, we are condemned by a man who, in the immortal words of Phil Cool, “Looks like someone who has just put his finger through the toilet paper”, as Arsenal failed to break down our resolute and determined defence.

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Fatima al Shamsi got so carried away with her essay on Arsenal worship that we thought it might be better to split her preview of Saturday’s game at the Emirates into two. Here are her answers to our questions and apologies in advance for failing to indoctrinate her sufficiently to get a prediction of a shock Sunderland victory…

Barcelona, Brazil, Arsenal…….why, in each case, and how important are Arsenal in relation to the others?

The Brazilian national team was my first real exposure to football. This is because my earliest childhood as well as my earliest football memories are from Brazil. Without really remember much of the 94 World Cup I still remember the passion that ran throughout the country my last summer there. Just like the rest of the world I had bought into the fact that Brazil were the best team in the world. Of course since then I have a strong love-hate relationship with the team. Whereas individual players play beautifully in their respective leagues, it’s been a while since the Brazilian squad has actually played at convincingly.
I was eight when I made my first steps into the world of club football. I remember sitting with my dad during one of his ritual weekend matches and for the first time ever I took a genuine interest in following what was happening on the big screen. While I watched my dad angrily yell at Manchester United, I instinctively took it that the opposing team were the ‘good guys’ and that was my first introduction to Arsenal. And ever since then I’ve been hooked (thank God the opposing team weren’t Blackburn, the Spurs or Chelsea …eugh). I just remember watching Bergkamp and Anelka and thinking they were absolutely amazing.
Since my dad used the weekends to unwind and watch loads of football then I was also exposed to the Italian and Spanish leagues. Although I still occasionally watch a Series A game I only truly follow La Liga and the Premiership. And as far as my love of Barcelona, it was simple, the household was split between Real Madrid fans (my mum and brother) and Barcelona (my dad and another brother)…I chose wisely. Ever since then its been quite a ride with the Catalans- this season being absolutely sensational.
Normally I can keep my Arsenal/Barca support separate but when they met for the Champions League finals (which I had predicted and was repeatedly dismissed for) in 06, I was clad in my maroon Thierry Henry jersey.
I am first and foremost a Gooner and will always be.

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The English always announce the arrival of winter snow in astounded tones, yet every year it snows. So sang Sandy Denny. Pete made the most of what was left of Saturday’s cup-restricted, weather-ravaged football, and caught a thriller. Thawing out, he muses on the declining allure of Premier football and wanders whether we might even be able to snatch something at Arsenal…..

A week without that rising tension in the pit of the stomach as you begin to think about Saturday’s game.

A week free from looking to see which black shirted buffoon will spoil the game on Saturday.

A Saturday away from trying to forecast the best combination of results that will enable us to entertain another glorious attempt to scale the foothills of the Premier League. A day where you can look at copious non league fixtures and choose the most esoteric available.

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Sunderland mosaic
Originally uploaded by JonHall

Put this posting down to la treve. That’s how French football deals with the depths of winter: a break in the season when bad weather might be expected (or so my late father-in-law used to claim; I always thought it had more to do with players wanting to eat, drink and be merry).

Sunderland’s own February treve, an unintended two-week gap between games resulting from our cheap exit from the FA Cup, allowed a few Mag-baiting imaginations to run riot at Blackcats forum. Salut! Sunderland nearly allowed its own thoughts to go the same way before deciding instead on a nice, safe, feelgood set of photographs from the recent SAFC v Fulham game.

Walking to the ground
Originally uploaded by JonHall

Jeremy Robson had started it over at the Blackcats forum, dreaming from his Canadian wilderness of misspent days in the Clock Stand Paddock. What, he asked, is there to hate about Newcastle? Quite a lot, it seems. It is fair to say the list of answers Jeremy initiated has since grown like Topsy as other supporters have chipped in..

File it under Mostly Good Fun, alongside Ian Black’s have-it-both-ways book Mackems vs Geordies/Geordies vs Mackems….

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With time on our hands – no football of the sort that matters to us until a week on Saturday – Salut! Sunderland‘s thoughts started to stray.

So it seemed a good time to introduce you to a fellow supporter with a dress sense all of his own.

Chris Butler collects football shirts. Not just any, but – for the most part – Sunderland shirts. And not just any SAFC tops (we all have those, and they’re replicas), but ones that have actually been worn by our players.

So he has the shirt worn by Gary Rowell for the home game against the Mags on April 8 1977 (a 2-2 draw), and Nicky Summerbee’s from our hapless promotion play-off final against Charlton in 1998..

In all, Chris – Sunderland born but living down south since he was a young lad – has about 100 shirts, of which the overwhelming majority, 85 or so, are Sunderland match-worn players’ shirts. He also has a signed replicas from the 1973 FA Cup-winning year.

Read on for Chris’s own story – and visit his website: www.sunderlandshirts.com

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So amid all the baiting of Rob Styles, I came across Jeff Winter’s website, The Ref Fights Back, by accident and then remembered that his book – Who’s The B*****d In The Black?: Confessions of a Premiership Referee – has been sitting on my desk at work for months.

As a lad, Jeff was – let’s not mince words – a Lad. In the book, he attempts to draw a neat distinction between being a hooligan and just standing up for yourself. But when he talks of trying to “take the Fulwell End” before eventually coming to the conclusion that he should distance himself from such antics, the distinction seems to blur a little.

But unlike lots of Sunderland fans, I liked him as a ref. He may be a Smoggie, and may have reffed with chest puffed put quite a long way, but I thought he was a good, strong official and they are the ones I tend to admire.

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Salut! Sunderland is fair-minded. We’ve had our go at Rob Styles – how could we have avoided it? – and it’s time to move on. We could praise the much-maligned Dean Whitehead for his outstanding game on Saturday. Pete Sixsmith sticks up in turn for Cisse and Collins. He is also beginning to sense safety despite tough games to come (or at least he would if only it got warm enough to restore the use of his senses)…

A friend of mine said a couple of weeks ago that he would be happy with seven points out of the Fulham, Mags and Stoke games. He would have been a happy man on Saturday night as we clambered up the league table to the giddy heights of 11th – almost on to that elusive first page of Ceefax.

To say that Saturday’s win was workmanlike would be a little uncharitable to those who profess to be workmen. The word brings connotations of people going about their jobs in a steady and efficient manner, doing what they were told to do and making sure the task was completed on time.

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