Beauties and beasts: (2) how Cabral’s shirt embraces our pain and expectation

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    Cabral: all the pain and absurdity of our passion encapsulated in one item of clothingAll the pain, passion and absurdity wrapped in one item of clothing

For the second in our new series of supporters’ recollections of specific Sunderland AFC shirts, Keir Bradwell pauses in his preparations for a trip to Swansea tonight to look back on one that promised so much but proved as invisible as the intended wearer.

‘I went to sign Cabral at 2am in a restaurant and I was not leaving until I got his signature,’ said Roberto de Fanti, our hapless director of football at the time, of one many players foisted on Paolo Di Canio. ‘Then 48 hours later he had offers from two clubs in the Bundesliga. If we had waited longer we would probably not have Cabral.’ Sounds now like a spectacularly missed opportunity to miss an opportunity … …

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Beauties and beasts: (1) a 1990s home winner among SAFC shirts

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Check out their site at http://bit.ly/1ZNPCJA

Fancy writing about a Sunderland top that brings back memories good or bad, beautiful or ugly, or amusing? Have a look at the possibilities at the Classic Football Shirts site. You may worn some of them. Or sworn at them. If you can put your impressions or recollections into words, anything from 200 to 600-700, contact us at Salut! Sunderland

Salut! Sunderland introduces a new series to which all readers are invited to offer contributions.

We all have our favourite SAFC shirts from the seasons we have supported the club, or even from seasons before we were born.

I still wear the 1937 FA Cup final replica top occasionally and I solemnly promise I was not there, though we did once have a Who are You? interviewee whose dad was in the crowd to see us beat PNE, who had to make do without Jordan Pickford, 3-1.

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Swansea City v SAFC Who are You?: ‘we love an in-form Ki’

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Unanimity: from the Facebook page of a previous Swansea interviewee, Jim White
Unanimity: we never tire of using this photo of Swansea fans, taken at a Wembley playoff, originally found on Jim White’s Facebook page

Jim White*, vice-chairman of the Swans Trust and the man behind www.scfc2.co.uk and https://twitter.com/swansinfo, is one of Salut! Sunderland‘s established friends. This is not his first visit to the Who are You? chair. But his thoughts are always fresh and always appreciated, even when – as now – he foresees the worst for us. Ahead of Swansea v Sunderland, Jim detects similarities between our clubs and is happy to declare a soft spot for SAFC. There’s some kiss and tell, too: he reveals why Mrs White No 1 is no longer Mrs White. And you can come back tomorrow to see what our own Pete Sixsmith told Jim’s site …

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Swansea v SAFC Guess the Score: and two competitions produced one winner

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Jake: 'anything Oxford can do ....'
Jake: ‘anything Oxford can do ….’

Monsieur Salut writes: this is indeed the Swansea City v Sunderland AFC Guess the Score. From this game onwards, temporarily at least, we revert to ‘for fun only’. We will still come up with competitions whenever sponsors appear on the scene and it goes without saying that any reader who knows a potential candidate/business should get in touch. And in the meantime, have a go anyway …

We asked you to Guess the Score in the Arsenal FA Cup match, with a prize at stake for the last time unless and until a new sponsor comes along to replace Personalised Football Gifts, who depart with our thanks for generous past support (see https://safc.blog/2016/01/the-salut-sunderland-3m-hits-competition-nearly-there/).

And before that we asked you to let us know what we are doing well, what we could do better and what we shouldn’t be doing at all at Salut! Sunderland. To mark last week’s milestone – the three millionth hit since the site was launched eight years ago – we persuaded another supplier, Classic Football Shirts, to come up with a prize for the best response.

We have a winner to announce. And without trace of a fix, the same reader has won both prizes.

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One of our own. How good was Jordan Pickford at Arsenal?

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Goalkeeping is trade that packs the odd surprise.

When Arsenal beat us 3-1 in the Premier League on December 5, the man of the match was not Ozil or any of Wenger’s other stars but Petr Cech, testament to the importance of his saves in stopping Sunderland gaining a point from the game.

And despite conceding three goals in the FA Cup tie on Saturday, our own Jordan Pickford was the best player on the pitch, ahead of the excellent Hector Bellerin and, though he played only from the 67th minute, the game-changing Aaron Ramsey.

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SA’s essay: Flattering to deceive? Deceiving to flatter?

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Jake's take on Big Sam
Jake’s take on Big Sam

John McCormick writes:

Here’s the final part of this evening’s trilogy. It’s the highly personal letter written by our manager and sent by courier to M Salut (and maybe one or two others). We only put it on this page because we know Ellis Short make our site his first stop after the Tram Car in Southwick on the way home.

What does our manager have to say this time? Is he telling the truth, as he sees it, or is he  emphasizing some players in order to move them or motivate them? Is he more informative than Hutch’s one-word verdicts? You’ll have to make your own mind up. Here’s what he said:

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Sixer’s Cup-tie Sevens: Arsenal 3, Sunderland 1, as we expected

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Jake: catch Sixer's instant seven-word verdicts throughout the season
Jake: catch Sixer’s instant seven-word verdicts throughout the season

John McCormick writes: no-one expected much from this game after Sam played it down,  which was just as well, I suppose. I did think we were going to score a second but then  I realized it was Danny Graham against Petr Cech. 

Pete Sixsmith appears to think similarly; here is his instant seven-word verdict, straight after the final whistle. 

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