Heerenveen today, gone tomorrow. Now for Sunderland goals to flow

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Monsieur Salut, adapted by Jake from Matt’s cartoon

Stop Press: a 5-2 win against Hartlepool – three goals from McNulty and one each from McGeady and Maguire.
And Bryan Oviedo is off the wage bill with a move to the FC Copenhagen in the Danish Superliga ….. good luck, Bryan

Sunderland may yet score before the season starts, hopes Monsieur Salut. Fittingly, no one will be there to see it.

After the 1-0 defeat to the Dutch top-flight side Heerenveen, only a week remains before the League One season kicks off with a home game against our owner and executive director’s team of choice, Oxford United.

But at least our goal shy Lads have a chance to boost morale a little with a behind-closed-doors final friendly of the pre-season, versus Hartlepool United on Monday. Yes, we know these games are about fitness more than results but it would do no harm to hear we’d actually hit the back of the net.

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Salut! Sunderland’s welcome to George Dobson – a big midfielder and what’s more, we paid for him

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George Dobson:a great photo, reproduced with the kind permission of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: at around 8pm, I switched on my phone after landing at Stansted, noticed the signing of George Dobson had been announced and prepared to write our usual welcoming piece on the train into London. Fat chance. The sun had come out and there were no trains. Nor any notice to that effect obviously visible in arrivals so passengers had to traipse all the way down to the platform only to be sent back to the terminal to queue for National Express tickets and then traipse one floor back down to locate the coach station. It was a grim ride into the capital. Probably unfair to blame Brexit but I’ll doubtless find a way. But here’s the delayed welcome …

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A frog or a prince? Salut! Sunderland welcomes Marc McNulty

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Jake’s salute to SuperKev. If only…

John McCormick writes: there’s a saying somewhere to the extent that you need to kiss a lot of frogs to get your prince. That has to be true of us. We’ve had Marco, Sir Kevin and Jermain Defoe, and also Darren Bent, but we’ve also had Tore Andre Flo, Asamoah Gyan, Steven Fletcher,  Kenwyne Jones, Marcus Stewart, Thomas Hauser, Kevin Kyle, David Bellion, Connor Whickham, Danny Dichio, Frazier Campbell, Jozy Altidore and Danny Bloody Graham (ISHS) among others.

And now we have Will Grigg and Charlie Wyke. Neither, it has to be said, has filled me with delight. Neither, it has to be said, has shone in the pre-season games. Or have I got it wrong? I wasn’t there, I have seen hardly any TV, and what do I know about football anyway? Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will correct me.

Or perhaps one of them will smack in half a dozen goals when we take on Oxford and prove me wrong that way.

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Promotion poll: Sunderland vie with Portsmouth but can Burton, Lincoln or Doncaster make top six?

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John McCormick, associate editor, writes: things have quietened down with our ‘who to follow’ poll, as we might expect. Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Rotherham and Peterborough. Then comes Coventry, followed at a distance by Donny, Lincoln and Burton.

That’s interesting because on Wednesday over at  Roker Report, Nick Barnes, who knows more about football than I ever will,  identified Lincoln and Burton as teams that could mount a challenge to Sunderland, along with Ipswich, Portsmouth, Peterborough and Coventry. He didn’t mention Rotherham.

I could extend our watch list to eight clubs, even nine on the grounds that Donny are ahead of Lincoln and Burton in our poll, and I have added clubs during the season – Luton last season being the most recent – but it makes graphics difficult to follow. So I’m going to stick with six.

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McGeady: Aiden and abetting a new Sunderland promotion push

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McGeady: our best signing so far. Photo courtesy of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: we all love a marquee signing, the arrival at the Stadium of Light of Light of a game-changing player. I have no problem with bivouac signings, as our three new acquisitions so far, all frees, might be termed. As long as Jack Ross and his scouts have done their homework correctly, they may turn out to be important components of Sunderland’s forthcoming second go at getting out of League One. But the contract extension for Aiden McGeady is in a different league …

Aiden McGeady, indisputably one of League One’s classiest players last season, is staying at Sunderland.

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Sunderland, Bolton and Bury. Our League One financial ramble has to end somewhere.

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I didn’t know when I’d get back to this series but it seems appropriate to visit these three now, though matters aren’t completely resolved. In two of the three clubs I’m not sure when they will be, and it’s possible we’ll get to the start of the season first.

And that introduces a small problem. The origins of the series arose from my curiosity about the finances and solvency of League One clubs in the context of their having the resources and ability to mount a promotion challenge. I never intended to be digging through files in the Companies House website and thought two posts would enable me to cover 20 clubs, with a third to deal with the three where administration was possible plus Sunderland, who were facing a takeover.

It didn’t work out like that. The start went pretty much as planned but my second dip into the League revealed a level of complexity that resulted in fewer clubs being covered in slightly more depth over two posts.

And then, when I got to Blackpool, Bolton and Bury, not to mention Sunderland, not everything was in order and I did have to dig deeper than I really wanted.  I managed to cover Blackpool and got up to speed with Bolton but in Bury’s case I could still be digging. However, everything has to finish somewhere, so here’s the last post in the series:

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ALS, Charlie Methven and ‘a small cabal of so-called supporters’

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Drumming up support

Close season means silliness, says Monsieur Salut. Our club is ‘linked’ with players no one at SAFC has actually ever wanted. We pursue targets none of the speculation even mentioned. Fans whinge that June passes without marquee signings. They whinge again when the first acquisitions are frees. But at least none of us would be stupid and petty enough to complain when Alex Morgan uses a tea cup gesture to celebrate the USA beating England in Lyon. Would we?

Meanwhile, in disjointed (but reasonably explained) fashion, A Love Supreme has been interviewing Charlie Methven in his English country garden …

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Portsmouth then Sunderland, Ipswich, Rotherham, Peterborough and Coventry top our poll. But where are Lincoln?

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On Friday we had over 3,000 visitors, followed by a quiet weekend. Not everyone took part in our top six poll  but over 1200 votes (not voters) have now been cast. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a League One fans’ site but I am expecting a few more will chip in before the season kicks off.

Early results suggest the headline I used then – for which I visited a couple of betting sites to find the promotion favourites – was on the right lines. Of the six clubs I named five are in the top spots. Lincoln (currently lingering in 8th place) are the exception with Sunderland, unsurprisingly, replacing them. There’s a gap – slight but quite evident – between the top three and the next three,  after which numbers drop off, so Lincoln and Doncaster, who made last season’s playoffs and now lie seventh, have quite a bit of ground to make up.

All of the clubs in the League received votes, which I’m taking to signify that we  managed a wide reach. It will be interesting to see if enough fans of so-called smaller clubs, which are predominantly towards the bottom of the poll, visit in large enough numbers to move their favourites upwards. Crowdwise, numbers are against them but we have only small numbers voting so you never know.

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