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Higher hopes

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At some stage I shall get really worried about the level at which our actual or suspected targets have been playing their football.

For now, it being early July, I prefer to remain upbeat. I cling to the belief that Roy Keane et al know what they are doing, have found gems in the Football League and Scotland and will one day soon land a couple of bigger fishes.

What of those who have eluded our line and hook?

David Nugent, so a Preston fan tells me, chose the unusual forum of a chance nightclub conversation to announce that he would be signing for Portsmouth tomorrow (Monday).

We’ll know soon enough about that. And I have not forgotten the views of those SAFC fans who said our failure to get him was really no great loss. My PNE man naturally thinks otherwise, though he admits that Nugent is the sort of player that “needs someone else alongside him” if he is to score a lot of goals.

But what interested me more was the player’s reported response when, in the same snatched nigthclub chat, he was asked what had gone wrong with the Sunderland approach.

“Roy Keane wanted me to sign there and then,” he supposedly replied.

Interpret those words. He meant:

1) I was hoping to use SAFC’s bid to coax my cherished Everton into coming for me
2) I wanted to use SAFC’s bid to encourage someone else to come and offer a better pay deal
3) I don’t actually fancy living in the North East
4) I wasn’t sure that I didn’t want to stay at Preston and help get them up next season

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Wages of sin: pay inflation sharpens Keano’s transfer challenge

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So David Nugent will not be playing in the new Boylesports-sponsored red and white stripes of Sunderland in the coming season, and our post-promotion list of acquisitions stands at two*: the encouraging purchases of Greg Halford from Reading and Russell Anderson from Aberdeen.

Very little of what I have seen or read about Mr Nugent inspired me to think that here was a top class striker who, despite showing a lack of obvious enthusiasm for a move to the Stadium of Light, would quickly win a place in the hearts of our fans.

Niall Quinn, I am sure, was right to express some understanding of the reasons for his prevarication. Roy Keane was even more right to become exasperated enough to conclude that he had no further interest in the player.

The Sportingo fans’ site was probably being a little harsh on Nugent in suggesting that he has been less than gentlemanly in his dealings with SAFC.

But from Sportingo’s assessment of him as a “rather limited player” to Terry McLoughlin’s view, at the Blackcats loop that he is “an unproven, average-to-decent, Coca Cola striker”, there seems little cause to be weeping into our beer (or vin rouge).

It is also far too early to become despondent about our slow progress in the business of strengthening the squad.

While we were all still reflecting on a great promotion season, Keane, Quinn and the chief executive Peter Walker were busy hammering out a wish list of nine targets. Not all of these even figure in the mile-long “rumour mill” list at the official club site and there is every reason to believe we will still land some of them.

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Tasmin Archer’s everyday story of Sunderland-supporting folk

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TasminWho said the Celebrity Supporters series was a one-hit wonder? No sooner had we finished the task of painstakingly typing out the last of the old interviews, which had somehow fallen off everyone’s computers, than new subjects came into view.

Tasmin Archer, who had a number one hit with Sleeping Satellite in 1992 and collected a Brit award the following year, was one of them. Great minds thinking alike, my approach to her came just as one Salut! Sunderland reader, Pete – another Pete, not the Sixer’s Sevens Pete – suggested her among a list of stars who had expressed some attachment to SAFC.

She agreed like a shot, and proved to be a terrific interviewee, plainly as passionate about the Lads as she is about her music.

The one question that had her not so much struggling to answer as struggling to be unequivocal was the obvious one: what feels better, getting to No 1 in the charts or seeing Sunderland clinch promotion/championship?

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Fixtures and fittings: fixing and fitting them to Mr Murdoch’s taste)

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Keano2
So, then. A point at home to Arsenal on Sunday May 11 2008 and the championship should be ours.

Ok, we may also need to pick up a few points before then, starting with the opening game, against Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham and also at home, on August 11.

I am indebted to Mark Walton over at the Blackcats forum for the 2007-2008 list, which I discuss on the continuation page and can also be seen in full here.

But if you live a long way from Sunderland, or from the venue of that away game you’ve set your heart on attending, do not overlook the Murdoch factor. Think hard, therefore, before committing yourself to that EasyJet flight, cheap advance rail ticket or cast-in-stone day off from work/wife/whatever.

Several of these dates will change to suit the needs of television, and the changes will take absolutely no account of the interests (or pockets) of ordinary supporters.

That’s why our supporters found themselves having to get to Southampton for a 5.15pm kickoff on a Monday evening in April.

It’s manipulation of the fixtures list at its most cyncical, and leaves decent fans with feelings of contempt for the big business stranglehold on our game. But since it’s not going to stop happening any time soon, be prepared……

* Picture: Infactah

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Halford’s on his bike, coming our way

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Tasmin Archer fans will just have to wait a little. Salut! Sunderland feels duty bound to extend a warm welcome to Greg Halford, Roy Keane’s first summer signing and one that fills the heart with hope.

He’s 22, stands 6ft 5in and cost our moneyed Irish friends £3m from Reading. But he will be remembered by many at the Stadium of Light for his excellent performance in Colchester’s colours against us last season.

As a right back, he fits a slot vacated by the return to Man Utd of Danny Simpson and represents a great start to the team strengthening we all knew was necessary if we are to re-establish ourselves in the Premiership.

There is room for improvement in most areas, but Keano is sensible to start at the back – though a glace at Halford’s record shows he is a useful goalcorer, too.

The rumour mill is working overtime – frankly I’d be disappointed otherwise – and we have been linked with any number of other players.

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The Celebs we cornered, and the ones we didn’t

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Whatever happened to the Peter O’Toole interview? Why wasn’t I invited into Gina McKee‘s parlour, bought drinks by Dave Stewart or treated to a slap-up meal by Glenn Hugill?

This is my 2007 introduction to the very last piece to appear in the Celebrity Supporters series.

It was about the ones we didn’t nail. People who wouldn’t help, or didn’t feel qualified to. One who promised so much only to disappear from our radar. Others who turned out to be non-supporters or, worse, Mags.

Those failures, coupled with the misery of being a Sunderland fan in the dark days of 2003, could have given me something German scientists had just then identified as post-traumatic embitterment disorder. But the series was great fun to produce and when it came to an end, there were plenty of people to thank……………

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