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Stewart Donald, Jack Ross and Sunderland’s chance to rise like the Phoenix

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Paul Summerside, more upbeat than we’ve seen him in a long while

After the bad news for Sunderland fans – finding themselves in the third tier just two seasons after completing a 10th straight season in the Premier League – comes some good news. According to My Top Sportsbooks, we’re favourites to win League One (10/3) and almost even money to earn promotion back to the Championship (6/5).

All depends on results. But the whingeing about transfers apart, the feeling among supporters seems strong and positive. We hate where we are but we see, in Jack Ross and the new owner, at least a chance to rebuild our club, starting with the recruitment of players who may not be big-money stars but actually want to perform for Sunderland AFC. Paul Summerside shares this surge of goodwill and we can but hope he does not live to regret his new-found optimism …

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Welcome Jerome Sinclair. Only a loan but a striker and, at last, transfer news

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Monsieur Salut offers the traditional Salut! Sunderland welcome to a new signing – Watford’s young striker Jerome Sinclair on a season-long loan deal …

Like many – most? – supporters, I am less than exhilarated by loan deals. They seem to have played a significant part in our decline in recent years.

But it is not as if our purchases and free transfer acquisitions were going so well that no loan deal was necessary. No one should be carried away by winning 6-0 at St Mirren; we have striker problems – I think it was the excellent Phil Smith who said in the Sunderland Echo that we were an injury to Josh Maja away from having no recognised attacker (no disrespect to Andrew Nelson, but he hasn’t played a senior competitive game).

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Sunderland Ladies’ double demotion: the questions Baroness Sue Campbell won’t answer

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Photo courtesy Sunderland AFC Ladies

Forgive Salut! Sunderland for being appalled at the double demotion of SAFC Ladies, guilty of no wrongdoing, and thus taking another dig at the FA, SAFC and maybe the SAFC Ladies management itself. Since no one has properly explained, no one knows who is most to blame …

As everyone who cares will know, Sunderland AFC Ladies have been handed what amounts to a double demotion, excluded from the Women’s Super League and its second tier despite finishing seventh top at the highest level of the English game.

I regard this as a scandalous affront to natural justice. The FA thinks it is somehow helping “women’s football to grow and prosper in the future”, though it will not explain – specifically – how such grotesquely unjust an exclusion of a successful team fits into this noble ideal.

Baroness Sue Campbell is the FA’s head of the women’s game. She keeps a straight face when claiming the process of deciding who may be included in the WSL, and who must be excluded, is fair and rewards “clubs willing to up their game and commit to the plans”.

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The scandal of seventh-top Sunderland Ladies’ exclusion from the Women’s Super League

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Jake says “Ha’way The Lasses”!

It is no secret that Monsieur Salut feels a monstrous miscarriage of natural justice has occurred with the double demotion of Sunderland AFC Ladies who,amid the mess of the parent club, admirably finished last season seventh in the highest tier of women’s football in England, only to be consigned to the lower league.

My analogy? Watford or West Ham, after comparable Premier League seasons, informed they would be in League One from next month. Questions have been put to the FA (earlier ones were answered here) and any response will be reproduced, fairly, in due course.

Here, Ian Todd MBE, a veteran of Sunderland support (men and women) and of the Football Supporters’ Federation and founder of the London and SE branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association, explains the background to a decision that frankly seems cruel and undeserved …

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Who Sixer met in Cornwall: likeable Newcastle fans, Cardiff minus Lee Camp

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Sixer keeping cool

Yes, if you were thinking this has already appeared, you were right. Monsieur Salut identified a technical issue with the original and decided to republish … this therefore supersedes the first one, and any Comments should be posted here

Pete Sixsmith missed a Sunderland game. Not an important one, and he does have more than one valid reason. So he compares very favourably to some of SAFC’s players, and I bet they haven’t taken in as many games as Pete while they have been skiving off.

And I bet they won’t tell us what they were up too, either. But Pete, being Pete, is more than willing to share his experiences – of decent pubs and beer, trains, art, eye candy and of course football. Plus something a little more exotic that you’re not likely to find near Roker beach

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Aye, Aye, Aye Aye, Sky Blues prefer us to the Ricoh

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John McCormick writes:  if you want to know the origin of the headline you’ll have to read on to the middle of this piece, where Malcolm, our esteemed deputy editor, has reworked a version of the old Fulwell End favourite “Monty is better than Yashin” following a recent barrage of voting from the Sky Blue bit of the West Midlands.

I have to say I found that barrage a bit strange. After all, when a blog adopts a title which includes the phrase “dodgy numbers”, and then ends with a disclaimer which states “the arithmetic’s correct, it’s just the rest could be a bit wonky” it’s best not to take it too seriously.

And when it says “unless new voter(s) decide to cast vote(s) for only one team and to throw rationality to the winds – and why not, it’s what football’s all about”, which is what I wrote in my last post, you might get some idea that we welcome other clubs’ fans and enjoy hearing from them.

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Pete Sixsmith, Poldark and the next big thing in Cornwall

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Sixer keeping cool

This has now been republished at https://safc.blog/2018/07/who-sixer-met-in-cornwall-likeable-newcastle-fans-cardiff-minus-lee-camp/ and it is there that you should post any comment …

Pete Sixsmith missed a Sunderland game. Not an important one, and he does have more than one valid reason. So he compares very favourably to some of SAFC’s players, and I bet they haven’t taken in as many games as Pete while they have been skiving off.

And I bet they won’t tell us what they were up too, either. But Pete, being Pete, is more than willing to share his experiences – of decent pubs and beer, trains, art, eye candy and of course football. Plus something a little more exotic that you’re not likely to find near Roker beach

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One Sunderland fan’s winning day out – at St Mirren but in Paisley

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Monsieur Salut writes: you cannot dance on the streets of Raith, or even St Mirren – it’s in Paisley – but I believe you can dance on the street, since there is (or was) a St Mirren Street. I don’t suppose many of our 500 fans at the 6-0 friendly win knew that, or much cared. But David Whitfield, whom I met at Facebook where he’s a friend of Pete Sixsmith’s, was there (not the street, but the game) and kindly agreed with my encouragement and Pete’s to write a short piece about his day. With thanks to him, and Themadmistake at YouTube for the clip …

 

Having never been to St Mirren’s ground, I decided that when the pre-season schedule was announced this would have to be on my list as one of the friendlies that I would attend.

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Sixer’s Sevens: Maja and Gooch lead the charge as St Mirren hit for six

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Jake: ‘welcome back’

Pete Sixsmith would have enjoyed this, but was nowhere near Scotland as Jack Ross went back to his last club, St Mirren, and saw his developing Sunderland side romp home 6-0.

(See the highlights here at safc.com)

Pete has been tasting pasties and footie down in Cornwall and will not catch another Sunderland game until the League One season kicks off. Ross’s admiring post-match comments confirmed the adage that when pre-season games go well, they are no longer ‘just about fitness’. The goals came from Josh Maja (2), Lynden Gooch  (2),  George Honeyman and Luke Molyneux. Apologies to Gooch – we thought it was Molyneux who’d also bagged two.

For this match, we’ll just run a contingency supersub’s verdict in place of Sixer’s usual seven-word summation (and for sake of completeness add ones from the Darlington and Grimsby games, too, though Pete was there for the former).

And while we’re on, does the Maja double act, and goals from midfield, suggest our striker woes are not quite so dire as has been suggested? We’ll see …

The Sunderland team was: McLaughlin; Love (Hume, 80), Ozturk (Taylor, 84), Flanagan, Matthews; Cattermole (Mumba, 74), McGeouch (Hackett, 84), Honeyman (Kimpioka, 84); Maguire, Gooch (Molyneux, 78), Maja Subs: Stryjek

Read more at: https://www.sunderlandecho.com/sport/football/sunderland-afc/impressive-sunderland-hit-st-mirren-for-six-in-convincing-friendly-win-1-9263069

An asterisk preceding any seven-word verdict shows it was not Sixer’s own (we’ve cheated a little with Darlo)…

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