Monsieur Salut writes: each matchday, ESPN FC expects me – or Pete Sixsmith when I am away – to send a report with a brief summary of the game followed by out-of-10 ratings for manager and team.
Monsieur Salut writes: people left their Stadium of Light seats in droves, Pete Sixsmith sent demoralised text messages and I ended up giving three-out-of-10s galore in my ESPN FC ratings. So what did David Moyes make of it? Well, he has either lost track of time or, when claiming SAFC matched Stoke for all but the first 20 minutes, meant to say the 19 minutes they took, starting in the 15th, to put the game out of sight …
Monsieur Salut writes: Is there no end to the pain to which Sunderland supporters are subjected by those rewarded handsomely to manage and play for the club? By the time Sunderland got started, 38 minutes into this miserable game, they were three down; it might have been four or five so easily had a well-organised but hardly exceptional Stoke City ripped though our slow, panic-stricken defence. Jermain Defoe scored with a clinical finish to pull one back but apart from one absymal miss from six yards by Jack Rodwell, even a marginally improved second-half performance offered few signs of hope.
David Moyes added his own contribution to a catalogue of individual failings by refusing to make a single change and, quite obviously, saying nothing at half-time to inspire a meaningful comeback. Pete Sixmsith’s seven-word verdict did undergo changes as the game wore on. I shall offer them all below …
Monsieur Salut writes: I got into trouble with a Salut! Sunderland reader, ‘Maw’ over at Twitter when I tweeted Jermain Defoe and said that while I might understand him wanting to leave at the end of the season, would he please stay for now? ‘Grow up,’ was the gist of my critic’s response and, while there was a germ of a serious point in what I had said, I ended up conceding defeat. The serious point holds good, especially if it is true, as speculated, that Defoe’s body language on Saturday suggested restlessness; whatever restructuring is needed – and by whom – come the summer, Defoe is our main, perhaps only hope of salvation between now and then. Alex McMahon agrees …
Jermain Defoe is one of the best strikers in the Premier League. The Sunderland man may be 34, but he certainly has not lost his mojo. The former England man has scored 12 goals and created as many chances in 21 Premier League appearances so far this season. That’s 57 per cent of the goals Sunderland have scored.
Monsieur Salut writes: Pete Sixsmith raised this question here several months ago. It occurred to me again as I wrote my preview of Sunderland vs Stoke City for ESPN FC – is Mark Hughes’s side, and the club itself, more or less what SAFC should be aiming to emulate? Why can they attract players with greater apparent ease than us, and how do they manage to get into the top half so often (OK, a bad start this season makes that a taller order for 2016-17)?
This was essentially how Wrinkly Pete – a regular Salut! Sunderland contributor Peter Lynn – began his crystal ball-gazing look at Sunderland’s survival prospects. But we have now amended the sequence starting with Leicester (a), taking account of revised predictions, and will continue to do until thd bitter end. In the case of each match, he predicts the outcome and later comments on the reality. This file will be updated as the season draws to its merciful close …
Peter Lynn dips back into his collection of dodgy old hits for inspiration as he does some back-of-envelope calculations on what David Moyes needs from the second half of the season if Sunderland are yet again to avoid the drop. He even allows for the unthinkable, losing at home to Stoke on Saturday , as he steers us to safety…
I’m sending out an SOS, ‘cos I’m in so much distress
So sang Edwin Starr on his hit Stop Her On Sight and I am hoping that I will not feel the same as I begin my four-hour drive home, post match on Saturday.
If David Moyes, pre-match on Saturday, can get his team to realise that this is War, another of Starr’s hits, then we might get a win and make a further small (?) step towards safety.
The story of Neil Baldwin* is an astonishing and uplifting one. Born to devoted Stoke City supporters, Neil had learning difficulties and needed speech therapy. He has made light of this, and his lack of formal academic qualifications, to work tirelessly as a lay preacher, circus clown and for many years the Potters’ kit man. He has his own football team, Neil Baldwin FC, with players drawn from the student body of Keele University, of which he is an honorary graduate having given 50 years of voluntary service in welcoming new undergraduates. Football celebrities, notably Lou Macari but also including Kevin Keegan and Gary Lineker, have acclaimed or befriended him or both.
When Macari, then managing Stoke, made him the kit man, he said it was the best signing he had ever made, such was the positive effect of his humour on the squad. He played five minutes a sub in a testimonial for Gordon Cowans in 1993 and, most famously, inspired the film Marvellous, based on his life.
‘It says everything for Neil that Marvellous was ever made,’ wrote the Stoke Sentinel TV critic, John Woodhouse. ‘In times when TV is seduced by vacuity and celebrity, it doesn’t sound that promising a pitch. A drama, set in Newcastle [under-Lyme], about a man saddled with the tag of “learning difficulties” who reveals himself to be so much more? Good luck with that one. And yet here it is – primetime BBC2.’
The autobiography, Marvellous: Neil Baldwin – My Story, written with the help of Keele University alumni Malcolm Clarke (a recent Who are You? interviewee) and Francis Beckett, was published by John Blake in 2015.
Welcome to Salut! Sunderland, Neil …
Guess the Score … in which the esteemed supporters of Sunderland and Stoke City, both sides acquainted with that most prestigious of colour schemes, red and white stripes, are warmly invited to predict the scoreline that history shall record …
Why is this week’s Guess the Score appearing early again this week? OK, the main reason is that no one has anything else they want to say beyond pointless reflections on transfers that may or may not happen.
Pete Sixsmith was among the tens of thousands who gave a miss to Sunderland vs Burnley. Oh what they missed. Sixer’s comeuppance came when the match he chose instead ended with a heavy defeat in the FA Vase for Shildon. the first team M Salut and almost certainly he saw in their County Durham boyhoods. Next day, he dutifully attended Sunderland Under 23s against Everton and still could get a win … there’s just a passing, sorrowful reference to the plight of SAFC Ladies; read more at this Sunderland Echo link