Sunderland vs Grimsby Town. After Lincoln debacle, will Tuesday’s child be full of woe?

Trust it to be on an especially dismal weekend for Sunderland supporters for this site to work just as it should: loads of readers, strong comments from our fans, appreciation from opposing supporters and, so far as Monsieur Salut can tell, no sign of the Turkish hackers.

It will hardly cheer up Pete Sixsmith to know “Clanford”, at this Lincoln City fan forum ensured a lot Imps fans would read his brilliant if depressing account (see it here if you missed it). Another City fan, Brendan Bradley, added this comment: “If there’s one sentence that applies to 100 per cent of football supporters though it’s this one: ‘as often happens, the game spoilt a pleasant day’.”

Another game looms before the international break and you will see if you read on that your thoughts are invited on how it will go. It is only the EFL Trophy, uninvitingly entitled Leasing.com Trophy for sponsorship reasons, but remember that as the equally mundane Checkatrade Trophy last season, it did get us one of those losing outings to Wembley we seem to specialise in.

But as we now prepare for Tuesday night, wondering if our well-paid, deeply under-achieving and maybe badly led team (or whichever fringe players take their places) can actually overcome Grimsby Town at home, it is worth looking at what one Lincoln-supporting Down Under exile (which I assume him to be), PerthImp, had to say about the Sunderland he saw when watching the game on i-Follow:

I thought Sunderland were awful and really didn’t live up to expectation. I especially thought they were dirty at times- twice Eardley was shoved in the face and the ‘referee’ gave nothing.

Were they that bad because they’ve decided they don’t want to play for Jack Ross – certainly some of their supporters don’t rate him. We they expecting to just turn up and we’d roll over after the last two or three weeks. Maybe Ross is a ‘dead man walking’. Apart from the strike that Vickers brilliantly saved they really didn’t cause us any problems at all …

Surely Posh [Lincoln’s next opponents] won’t be as bad as Sunderland? Will be a better test maybe.

For the more philosophical of Sunderland fans – broadly the older ones – messing up games we’re expected to win comes naturally. Lincoln supporters had a lot to cheer about last season, when promotion was won, but not much since their three straight wins at the start of this one; their joy at beating us is flattering in its own way and reminsicent of how we felt with those successive home wins against mighty Man City. One Lincoln fan remembered when they, too, beat Citeh – then in the second tier – in the League Cup, winning both legs, in 1996.

On to Tuesday. Most of it will be more concerned with our next League One game, the visit to second-placed Wycombe Wanderers a week on Saturday, by which time we will almost certainly be out of the top six thanks to the postponement of Saturday’s scheduled home game vs Fleetwood Town.

But have a go in any case. There’s no prize but tell us how the match will end.

It is a northern group stage game – our first with Scunthorpe currently top, having four points from two games after beating Grimsby and drawing against the group’s other side Leicester Under 21s before losing on penalties. The losing side in a shoot-out still picks up one point for the draw at 90 minutes.

Ha’way the Lads …