Dear Steve Bruce: this is how it feels …

Mrs Logic seeks a helping hand

Apologies to supporters in Crook, Norway and elsewhere who had to wait to see their comments appear – M Salut was away all day yesterday – and also to those who cannot bear to read another word about Sunderland 0 Fulham 3. Sorry, but there’s an awful lot to say. Salut! Sunderland readers include Steve Bruce champions, even in these straitened times but Mick Goulding is not among them, His depressing but incisive and heartfelt thoughts were first expressed at the Blackcats list, but could serve to perfection – with a couple of change, making Bruce read “you” – as a response to the manager’s post-match e-mail …

Dear Steve,

We actually played some good football in the first half – on the ground and passed it about well. We also created a few real chances. But that, and the continuing improvement of Colback, who was probably man of the match, was the sum total of the good things to be said about it.

We have nobody in the team who can shoot. We played a bloke up front as a striker who hasn’t scored for over two years and has one goal for the club.

We might as well have played John Steed from The Avengers up front, for all the use Steed Malbranque is. And Cattermole – clean though in the box with just the keeper to beat and all the time in the world – showed us again why our goals total is so low. No goals coming from midfield (with the exception of last week) is the mark of a poor team. Today, we had six midfielders on the pitch (seven, if you include Elmo) and none of them could score. None of them can shoot to save their lives is why. So we put a dodgy centre-half up front to see whether he can miraculously become a striker. Err…. no…… he can’t.

Our betting syndicate included a fiver on a 3-1 defeat at 25/1 and the useless ******** couldn’t even come up with a token goal at the end. Absolutely and embarrassingly pathetic.

Then we have a defence which has simply become a joke. Turner has become useless, and we don’t know who else to play at centre-half. Onuoha (who is only on loan, remember and doesn’t give a ****) just strolls around with no sense of urgency like he has all day. He was like that at right back, but got away with it more. In the centre he’s a liability.

But talking of loanees and not giving a ****: the lack of effort from Muntari was an absolute disgrace and we should send him back immediately without any further pay being wasted on him.

I said before Xmas that you would never be any more than a mid-table manager and I’m still of that opinion. You’ll probably finish the season with lower-mid-table mediocrity – because I don’t think we could possibly get any worse than today’s second half. But I just wish we’d get somebody good for a change.

The reason why we’re never any better than mediocre is that we’re always happy to settle for mediocrity. We get a mediocre manager and we have people telling us you’re one of the best and will bring a great future. But it’s *******. You’ve never given anybody a great future and don’t know how to. Why does everybody who ever runs Sunderland keep settling for mediocrity and trying to sell it to us as better than it is? They’re deluded. Cowie, Murray, Quinn … they’ve all been deluded.

I’m sick of the lot of you and I just wish the season was over. I wish I didn’t have to waste my time watching the Wolves game – and missing some of the Cup Final in the process. [What idiot decided to play league games on the same day as the Cup Final, when they could have been played on another day?] Why do all of our seasons end up being a pile of *****? If you don’t get sacked there will be absolutely nothing to take any interest in until August!

And for a number of reasons I didn’t even have a drink today or tonight (Saturday) and I wish I was mortal so I could forget about it.

All the best,

Mick Goulding

* Mick Goulding recently retired from the Open University, for which he worked for 40 years, and contributes regularly to the Blackcats-mail list.