At the start of the season some 7,696 votes had been cast in our relegation poll. As you can see below, the clear favourites to go down were AFC Bournemouth, Watford and Sunderland, with Norwich then Leicester following behind. Aston Villa and NUFC were also given as possibilities; Villa weren’t far behind Leicester but fewer people went for NUFC and even fewer opted for a club outside the chosen seven.
Salut! Sunderland won’t labour this but the poll on our club’s performance in the transfer window can continue for another few days before getting its decent burial.
You can see from clicking on View Results that the number of ratings posted is approaching 200 (300+ as of midday on Thursday – Ed). That’s a small percentage of SAFC’s support base but a bigger sample than professional pollsters typically regard as viable in their surveys of voting intentions and so on.
Opinions are like, well, anything we all have. Mine is no more valuable than the next Sunderland supporter’s.
The transfer window perked up a little towards the end with Fabio Borini’s broadly welcomed return and the loan addition of a full back from Spurs, the USA international DeAndre Yedlin.
Deadline day brought one last player to welcome. We wanted a full back and that is what DeAndre Yedlin, a USA international signed on loan from Spurs is. ‘I’m delighted to be given the opportunity to play for a club with such great history,” he says diplomatically to safc.com. ‘I’ve heard fantastic things about Sunderland and the supporters from Claudio Reyna and Jozy Altidore.’ Rob Hutchison finds more than his usual one word apiece to run the rule over the eight imports …
Who is still to come and who may yet go? What will Sunderland’s squad look like come 6pm? Time will …
Pete Sixsmith was inconsolable when Salut! Sunderland, in common with Hello! magazine, lost out to OK in the bidding war for exclusive coverage of Fabio Borini’s Tuscany wedding to Miss Erin O’Neill. Now he makes up for that disappointment, forming the official ‘welcome to the North East’ party as the happy couple plan their new life on or near Wearside. And guess what? Sixer’s recipe for happiness had Erin in stitches (see her retweet below) …
From the splendidly named Oscar Chamberlain at SAFC.com comes official confirmation of the not too well-kept secret. Fabio Borini is a Sunderland player again, and this time he’s ours rather than someone else’s on loan.
Read what we – and you – had to say about it earlier at https://safc.blog/2015/08/liverpools-fabio-borini-we-may-finally-get-our-man-a-good-idea/.
Stop Press: deal done – see new posting
Reports of Fabio Borini’s proposed return to Sunderland have a stronger look today than they ever did when a whole summer seemed to be wasted trying to bring back a player whose heart lay elsewhere.
When the Sunderland Echo says a player is attending the academy for a medical, the fee agreed with his present club, we are entitled to believe it is probably true. The story has gathered more steam as the day has proceeded.
Bob Chapman seems to have had the sort of awayday Monsieur Salut most enjoys (except when there’s the cherry on the cake of a win to make it even better): pre-match pints with John Marshall and the Woods brothers, Mick and Gerard, followed by Sunderland goals to cheer and at least the avoidance of defeat along with the feeling, still weak but growing, that things may indeed be going to get better.
Bob steps up to the Soapbox because Pete Sixsmith took himself off to Wembley for the utterly one-side Leeds Rhinos’ victory over Hull KR (50-0). He draws attention to the highlight of his afternoon, Lizzie Jones’s tearjerking rendition of Abide With Me stirring memories of her husband Danny, the Keighley Cougars and Wales player who died from a heart attack after feeling unwell during a game in May. That was worth reproducing here and I challenge you not to be moved.
Now let Bob describe his day ..
John McCormick writes: I thought a becoming-good (bar one) midfield won us a point yesterday but I didn’t see it live and I didn’t see the full game. I’ll have to wait, therefore, for more considered opinions before I have the full picture. Here’s the first of them, from Rob Hutchison who, as usual, needs only a word to get his message across