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Villa through and through, Jonathan Fear* is Salut! Sunderland’s second football web guru to preview Saturday’s game at the SoL. He’s the co-owner and a director of Vital Network, which runs www.vitalfootball.co.uk. As many fans will know, Vital splits into sites for the supporters of different teams. In the picture, he’s on the right (or should that be the left? see comments), and photographed with his good friend Dennis Mortimer, a former Villa captain, and another pal, Deano. As for the game, he sees the ball bouncing off a Sunderland backside past Fulop in time added on to bag three away points (a prediction I erroneously attributed, at another site, to our first Villa fan, Stuart Young, though he also reckoned on 1-0 to Villa). They both would say that, though; Villa are on a high, and he gleefully recalls a quote from local radio to the effect that they seem to be winning when they’re good, when they’re OK and when they’re rubbish…

Did you expect such a strong challenge from Villa this season? Can you make to 2nd of 3rd – or would Martin O’Neill suggest you’d been drinking?

I am not sure I expected quite as strong an assault on the top four. I know that is where the powers that be and the manager at Villa want to get us and that we are building, but I didn’t think our summer spending was quite good enough to fire us this far up the league. I think now, depending on whether we bring in at least 2-3 decent quality purchases including at least 1 striker, then we are in with a shout. Fair enough you look at the so called established ‘big’ four (hate that expression) and they are more used to finishing the season and the pressure etc, but then we have a good young team with players that look like they are enjoying themselves. Not only that we have picked up the habit of winning ugly. So even if we aren’t playing well, we are still getting the maximum points which is a great habit to have!
One of our local radio chaps said recently ‘Villa win when they are playing well, win when they are just ok and win when they are poor. That is the sign of a great team forming’.
However despite the highs we experienced in the early 80’s + the two League Cups in the 90’s we are used to disappointment, so I REALLY don’t want to get too carried away, that said, it is always nice to dream and having finished 16th, 11th and last season 6th, it seems pretty obvious that we’ll win the league this year!
As for Martin O’Neill, he’d be right if he suggested I’d been drinking and if he has any sense, so has he. That is one job I could not do for all the tea in China, the pressure must be agony at times.

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Some weeks, we fear on Monday that we’ll find no one to preview the next match from an opposing fan’s viewpoint. Other weeks, we’re spoilt for choice. Maybe it’s their recent ascendancy, and Big Four aspirations, but Aston Villa – due at the SoL on Saturday – can play hard to get. Yet, come Tuesday, we have not one but two, and not just any two but two Villa nuts who also run important sites/networks aimed at all football fans. So let’s start early this week. First up is Stuart Young*, who also previewed last season’s Villa v Sunderland game. Stuart runs both Project Football and the A Villa Fan site. The opening is short and sweet, but dig deeper for some fascinating thoughts which include a highly surprising view of Ashley Young…..

Hello and Happy New Year to all the Mackems

This is my second year on Salut! Sunderland and like last year when I was asked to write an introduction I had no idea what to write…but here goes:

When you guys visited Villa Park back in September I had very high hopes for your side. Keano had spent a few quid, and you had a strike force of Djibril Cisse and Kenwyne Jones – surely you would be pushing for a top half finish.

Your fans gave a good account of themseleves, and so did your players and we just about beat you 2-1 thanks to goals from Carew & Young. Who would of thought back then that Villa and Sunderland would be where they are now in the table?

Anyway best of luck for the rest of the season (after Saturday) and I’ll get cracking with these questions of yours:

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kertoon

UPDATE: Jan 12…if 1) there is the slightest truth in speculation that we are about to sell Kenwyne to Villa and 2) no replacement is lined up and 3) we go down for lack of firepower, someone needs to be handed a revolver and bottle of whisky and led to the solitude of a darkened room

When, on behalf of 5573, the magazine of the London branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association, I wrote to Martin O’Neill to request an interview, the silence was deafening.

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Pete Sixsmith‘s first text from the Riverside read “Brrrr……” and until the last 10-15 minutes, it got little warmer for Sunderland supporters, the one obvious piece of football in the first half being Downing’s run and neat pass, following by Alves’s class strike, albeit without being troubled by anything so revolutionary as a marking defender. By the end, we should have won, but it was a grim game. Pete somehow conjures lyrical prose from a dispiriting experience….

The great Liberal Prime Minister, lumberjack and saver of fallen women, William Ewart Gladstone once described Middlesbrough as “the infant Hercules”, as a tribute to its 19th century industrial prowess.

The only comparison to Hercules that this dreadful match brought to mind was the knackered out horse that pulled Steptoe’s cart.

Let’s deal with the ‘Boro first. They are in trouble with Downing, and in serious trouble should he leave in this transfer window. He is their only quality player and without him they would have little chance of staying up. He seems ready to move, but why anyone should want to go to such an awful club as Spurs is beyond me.

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Why on earth did we start the Salut! Sunderland series of articles by fans of the teams we play next? It demonstrably speeds the ageing process; I could swear I’m only 31, yet I feel, er, 32.
The problems occur before every other game. Half of these features, in other words, are planned to perfection (we have Mags queueing up for the Feb 1 game; sorry, Joe, you just don’t measure up to our required standard of English, and Mike needn’t come creeping around asking for a second chance.
But the rest of the time, it’s wing and prayer stuff. On the Sunday, we suddenly remember we need a witty or wise rival fan of the club we’re p[laying in just six days; we post obsequious pleas at one of that club’s fan sites, beg favours from friends, bombard celeb fans with calls or e-mails we know they’ll never return (unless they are Bob Willis) and then sit back and hope for the best. The silence on Monday and even Tuesday can be deafening. Then suddenly, we have two offers, maybe three. How can you turn someone away, especially on this occasion when your own, Boro-supporting nephew has let you down? Robert Nichols* was the first of the Boro fans to dig us out of a hole this week. But he runs the excellent Fly Me To The Moon site – as close as I’ve seen to the ideal internet fanzine – and runs a business, so has his time cut out. Boro born and bred, he still found time to offer some challenging, entertaining thoughts….

This is one of the most important Tees Wear clashes in recent times, especially for Boro.

Languishing at fourth bottom in the table we desperately need some points. News of Stewart Downing’s transfer request has rippled shock waves across Teesside.

Funnily enough it could actually galvanise us. The feeling that even though our star name is disaffected we must pull together will grow. It’s us against Sunderland, us against the world and win at all costs.

It will be a fiercely partisan atmosphere at the Riverside. Emotions will be running high. We felt aggrieved earlier in the season when a missed penalty turned victory into defeat.

Don’t expect Stewart Downing to be stepping up for a spot kick if awarded this time. But do expect to play a leading role in hunting down Sunderland and proving he is worth more than any £14 /£15 million bid.

The derby match means far more than the story of any one player and that’s the message that will come over loud and clear. But it could just add fire to our burning desire to beat Sunderland and hi-tail it away from the relegation zone.

Here’s the answers to your questions (you did ask a lot!)…

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Let’s get this right. You go to games at Roker Park with your mates. You scream yourself hoarse at Wembley to do your bit towards 1-0 against Leeds in 1973. You “always want Sunderland to win”. So, of course, the club you support is beyond doubt. OK, the last one was cheating, because John Irvine* did add “unless they’re playing us”. And Us is Boro. In a short but very sweet Who Are They? offering, the first of two ahead of Saturday’s game at the Riverside, John explains his schizophrenia…

Boro through and through…I am John. Retired, 61 years old.

I can’t say why, and I have considered giving up going on a number of occasions, but somehow the love affair continues.

What makes it difficult sometimes is that I usually go on my own, as most of my friends support other teams.

For a while in the 70s I actually started going to Sunderland with a lot of my friends.

I even managed to go to the 73 Final and shouted till I dropped for Sunderland to win. It was one of the most memorable occasions in my life.

However, Jack Charlton’s Boro team dragged me back to my proper roots, and I have stayed loyal ever since.

I have been a season ticket holder in the West Stand Upper since we moved to the Riverside in 1995. I always want Sunderland to win, as long as they are not playing us or sending us to the relegation places. However, I always want Newcastle to lose even if they are in a different division.

And now I believe you have some questions…….

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On a cold night in Northumberland, Pete Sixsmith hoped to see a fairytale come true for Blyth Spartans and make them our FA Cup fourth round opponents. Oh well. Sadly, though it went to script, it was not a fairytale script. So we get Blackburn yet again……

It’s a corny headline but it really does sum up what happened at Croft Park last night.

The Spartans (289 fewer of them than those in the film) put up a really spirited and hard working performance against the kind of Blackburn side that one associates with visits to the Hetton Centre rather than the Stadium of Light.

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Pete Sixsmith found the first half against Bolton deadly dull, the second satisfying enough to be able to look back with a more positive view of the whole game. Can we actually look forward to the first decent FA Cup run since Mick McCarthy took us to a semi-final (v Millwall) that we should have coasted?…

It’s nice to win an FA Cup tie. In all the years I have followed Sunderland we have fluctuated between good runs (73, 76, 92 and 04) and abysmal defeats (Everton 66, Orient 72, Brentford 06, Wigan 08 – feel free to insert any others) so it was good to win and to win a decent game against a side who seemed to take the competition and the game seriously.

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Who needs the Queen?….

Pete Sixsmith looks back over the year and awards his own New Years Honours (Colin Randall explains the baby in a footnote)….

That’s Christmas over for another year. Hope you got lots of good presents and had a jolly good time in the bosom of your family – or at least in someone’s bosom.

I got some ace presents: a book I first read in 1958, a new shirt, a CD of Julian and Sandy from Round The Horne (although they sound suspiciously like Kevin Keegan and Terry McDermott taking a training session), a book about the French Resistance (Bellion and Laslandes) and the kitschiest alarm clock in the history of the world brought back from Kuwait by a friend of mine who is teaching there. It’s bright blue, in the shape of a mosque and the alarm is a (very) approximate rendition of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Quite something!

On the negative side, there was a truly awful display at Everton which must have had Quinny, and whoever else is in the board room at the moment, doing impersonations of Corporal Jones; my failure to be in The Lounge Inn at Southport when Stevie G (allegedly) whacked the DJ despite being in the resort; and the repeated failure of this and previous Governments to include me in the New Year’s Honours List for services to Sunderland AFC and the persistent brutalising of schoolchildren in the Ferryhill and Chilton areas.

So, what better way to fritter away the dying embers of the Christmas holiday than coming up with my own New Year’s Honours list?

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Ah for the romance of the FA Cup. The great leveller that gives a whiff of glory, however fleeting, to the lads from below, and sometimes deep below, the Premier League. Didn’t we all turn our thoughts in May back to the day – whether or not we were there, or even alive – our Division Two heroes overcame the then mighty Leeds United of Don Revie to win the cup? Don’t some of us possess replica shirts from the previous Cup Final win, against Preston North end in 1937? Don’t we all want Blyth Spartans to get one over Big Sam this weekend? Well, yes. But then, how many Premier bosses will field weakened sides, vaguely hoping for some sort of run but not if it means compromising prospects of a top six finish, or survival, in the league? And how many fans of either side will turn up at the Stadium of Light, eight days after a 44,000+ gate for Sam’s real team? But hey, we’re due a run ourselves after the dismal early exits of recent times. Craig Johnson* – found at the Bolton Wanderers FC fansite BWFC UK Forum – feels the same about his club. It’ll be his first visit to Sunderland, and he expects to go back to Lancashire with Bolton’s fourth round place we secured, or at least a Reebok replay to look forward to……

Hello and happy new year to all the fans of Sunderland AFC from a supporter of the greatest football team in Lancashire, Bolton Wanderers.

Let’s get on to the topic of our clubs up and coming encounter… I shall be making my first ever trip to the Stadium of Light and Sunderland in general this Saturday.

With former Wanderers first team coach Ricky Sbragia as your new manager and Bolton fan favourite El Hadji Diouf currently playing for you, it should certainly make for a fantastic atmosphere and a great game of football.

Our recent run of form makes our 4-1 victory over you in November seem like a very long time ago. Our home defeat at the hands of our arch rivals Wigan Athletic last Sunday has left a very bitter taste and all Bolton fans are hoping that a good performance and a victory on Saturday will give our players the confidence to turn our recent poor league form around.

Maybe it’ll be the 100th Bolton victory in a match I’ve attended. See you all on Saturday and may the best team win. Now it’s time for me to tackle the questions:

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