I have been worrying for a while about our strike force.
Until this week, if we leave aside development squad players, Gus Poyet had four options up front: Steven Fletcher, Connor Wickham. Jozy Altidore and Danny Graham. Don’t laugh at the last name; he’s been on the bench.
Who’d run a football website? Just as we’d settled into some really good readership results, along comes the dreaded passion killer known as the internationals. Suddenly, the readers disappear, the Facebook group goes quite silent, the Twitter account may as well shut down. Then, with the scent of resumed normality in the nostrils, we present Guess the Score and another good Who are You? interview ahead of Leicester vs SAFC. Interest, I have to admit, has barely recovered from the Euro 2016-induced slump.
Tantrum over, let’s welcome back Sunil Armar* and Chris Moore**, our pair of bright and bushy-tailed Foxes who nobly volunteered to speak for their club. The first part of the double interview can be seen at https://safc.blog/2014/11/leicester-city-v-safc-who-are-you-1-on-superkev-racism-and-survival/. I was going to say it’s very good for those who missed it but there’s no need as nearly everyone missed it (a desultory few hundred hits all day whereas we had previously and regularly been in four figures and would be still if we just filled the space with tosh lifted from sports agencies and websites). Let’s see if we can capture anyone’s attention with their thoughts on Sunderland, star Leicester players (and duds) past and present and how Saturday will go …
Finding a Who are You? candidate is not always easy. With Leicester City it was a cinch. Not one but two possible interviewees replied in quick succession with offers to leap into the hot seat. It seemed wrong to turn either Sunil Parmar* or Chris Moore** away so here is the first part of Salut! Sunderland’s first WAY double-header of the season … the second instalment will appear tomorrow
Love them or loathe them, international breaks get in the way of the normal business of Salut! Sunderland. But for John McCormick’s sterling efforts, there has been nothing new here for days.
But that is partly a result of Monsieur Salut’s own international break, a long weekend in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, a port with a momentous history and home to one of our own Pete Sixsmith’s younger brothers, Phil, and his charming Greek wife, Veta.
I suppose the referendum on Scottish independence was the starting point for this post, that and my trip up for …
Every so often, others come cap in hand to Salut! Sunderland for help, almost always of the ‘free, reward-in-heaven’ variety. They want our views of this or that. Monsieur Salut reckons he has done his bit for unpaid journalism and usually asks around in case someone else fancies obliging the website, publication or broadcaster concerned.
Pete Sixsmith‘s great fund of knowledge, general as well as football, makes him an easy recipient in this buck-passing exercise. Here he is again, responding heartily to a request from a newly established site, http://thefootballshirtcollective.com/. The approach was from the site’s Michael Maxwell, who said: “We want to tell the stories behind great football shirts.”
Sixer rattled off his answers to three questions as quickly as used to get down low goalbound shots when he was a goalie for the Shildon Sunderland Supporters’ AFC. You may come up with other candidates …
It was clear the moment Monsieur Salut nominated Lee Cattermole as Sunderland’s player of the season so far (at ESPN: see http://www.espnfc.com/barclays-premier-league/23/blog/post/2129545/the-best-20-premier-league-players-so-far-this-season) that the North East’s football writers would feel obliged to follow suit. In fact, they’ve gone one step beyond and made him their player of 2014. Pete Sixsmith discusses a top three selection with a distinctly Sunderland flavour …
The full tracklist for the Beach Boys’ 1966 album Pet Sounds, so good for its time that it even came – belatedly – to be admired in the USA, runs: Wouldn’t It Be Nice?; You Still Believe in Me; That’s Not Me; Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder); I’m Waiting for the Day; Let’s Go Away for Awhile; Sloop John B; God Only Knows; I Know There’s an Answer; Here Today; I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times; Pet Sounds and Caroline No.
Task for today? To apply the ones Peter Lynn left out as he found ways of describing his Sunderland thoughts and experiences through pop song titles and lyrics. I’ll see if I can twist the arms of Personalised Football Gifts for a mug for the best entry (as well as going back on the last time I said the same thing and promptly forgot to award a prize). Let’s keep it to the Beach Boys but I’ll allow entries citing tracks from the rest of their discography …
Here is the feature we introduced with the intention of getting readers talking.
Salut! Sunderland: the way it is is essentially your forum, a place to let off steam, make a point or raise an issue none of the site’s contributors has got round to writing about. It removes the need to wait for Sixer, Monsieur Salut, John Mac, Ken Gambles, Malcolm Dawson, Jeremy Robson or any of the the others to catch up on the news. We haven’t the resources to be any quicker.
What do Alexis Sanchez, Diego Costa, Adam Lallana, Sergio Aguero, Angel Di Maria and Lee Cattermole have in common? Oh, and I almost forgot to mention Jack Colback, also in the list.
Each has been chosen as his club’s star performer of the season so far by the team of bloggers who write about Premier League football at ESPN. That team includes Monsieur Salut.