Jake: ‘send them back to Coventry pointless – if not naked on horseback’
John McCormick writes: Pete Sixsmith makes reference to events at and around Coventry City FC in this piece. The Coventry Telegraph is a good source of information and includes a countdown clock which will tell you how long it will be until CCFC play their last game at the Ricoh – and maybe in the EFL – unless something changes. At the time of writing it’s a little over two weeks.
Camera shy he may be, but click on Laurie’s chosen image to explore the wonders of this season’s Who are You? series
Laurie Kilpatrick is an innocent man. He wasn’t even an egg, as one of my daughters used to say, on the infamous night that Jimmy Hill – er – orchestrated the perfect finish to Coventry City’s final game of the season, a match delayed by congestion against Bristol City: making sure the players of both sides, then drawing 2-2, knew Sunderland had lost at Everton. It was the only combination of results that would send us down and keep both of them up and they played out the game without further effort.
Laurie, a London-based City fan who is the man behind The Lonely Season blog, sees the funny side of Sunderland supporters’ collective long memory. And with his answers to our questions, he upholds the high standards of our League One Who are You? interviews …
When you are in sight of an automatic promotion place, three successive home games might appear something of a gift. But nerves play a part, too, and often enough this season Sunderland have suffered less in this respect on their travels than at the Stadium of Light, says Monsieur Salut.
The first of that trio of ties, of course, is behind us. A jittery performance against Burton Albion, described by Pete Sixsmith as a team looking tired up against “sprightly’ opponents, nevertheless yielded the point that took us second top.
Sunderland under Jack Ross continue to show a welcome defiance to the idea of being defeated. And still we have a game in hand over the side we displaced, Barnsley.
Dropping two points left it a lot less likely that we can catch Luton at the top. But the run-in remains in our hands and we need only match Barnsley’s results to be be sure of finishing above them while naturally keeping an eye on what Charlton and Portsmouth are up to.
Malcolm Dawson writes…..with a little more luck we could have had all three points but in truth we were fortunate to come away with a draw. If that sounds more than a little contradictory there’s more to come.
We hit the woodwork twice, had a goal disallowed (correctly in my view), theirs came about after an attempted pass inside took a wicked deflection off Flanagan’s outstretched leg and I thought we had the better side. But we surrendered possession far too easily, left big open spaces in midfield and at the back (which the Brewers exploited) rarely won a second ball and more than once needed Jon McLaughlin to be on top form to keep us in the game. All that and a ref who once again failed to impress.
We might have had the better side but in my eyes Jack Ross’s boys only performed at about 40 per cent of their ability whilst the visitors were closer to 90. I left the ground knowing that an automatic promotion spot will be ours if we can match Barnsley’s and Portsmouth’s results over the remaining games but also a little concerned that three of our remaining six games are at home, where we might be undefeated in the league, but where we have also dropped a lot of points in games we might have expected to win.
I’m writing this intro before receiving Pete Sixsmith‘s match report and wonder whether his view of the game and his assessment of our current position matches my own.
Well it’s here now and you, no doubt like me, will be eager to read his thoughts.
Even though today’s draw does move us into second, is the result good enough? There will be naysayers but, let’s not forget, this was not our strongest side and it was our fourth game in how many days? Surely we’d have taken this position a month ago, wouldn’t we?
Pete Sixsmith’s report will be here tomorrow. For now, here’s a quick seven word taste of what is to come:
The death of Willie McPheat from Alzheimer’s comes as a sad reminder to older Sunderland fans of a player who was never able to show the Roker Park faithful his full talents after his career was destroyed by a terrible tackle from Leeds United’s Bobby Collins in August 1962.
Like many of our players in those distant days, he was a Scot. Born in Caldercruix in Lanarkshire, he signed for us as a 16-year-old and was seen as a fine young prospect. His early progress was disturbed by a detached retina but he overcame that to make his debut in October 1960, scoring on his debut in a 2-3 home defeat to Leeds United.
It grew and grew.Salut! Sunderland invited readers old and new to contribute their photos from a great if ultimately disappointing weekend in London for the Checkatrade Trophy final against Pompey at Wembley, writes Monsieur Salut.
Slowly, pictures started to arrive. And then our associate editor John McCormick chipped in with his more advanced techie skills to turn a spur-of-the-moment idea into a project, creating the slideshow you can see by following the link in my tweet above to the Salut! Sunderland Facebook group.
(John Mac adds – I’ve now managed to embed the video at the bottom of the page too, but our facebook page is always worth a visit)
Dave the Burton Pieman and broadcaster with one of his celebrity interviewees
Monsieur Salut writes: Burton Albion are a club with lots of virtues but the size of the fanbase is not among them, unless small is beautiful. Finding a Who are You? interview volunteer who isn’t the one we had before, and also the one before that, is not easy. Hence, our latest cap-in-hand approach to the admirable Dave Child*, who combines home-and-away support with a mini-career as a radio pundit on all things Burton Albion and also the quality of football ground pies.
It is no hardship to turn to Dave once more for a look at the season our two clubs have had in the third tier after going down together a year ago. And he will collect a Salut! Sunderland mug in honour of of his services to this series …
Towards the end of last season, not quite a year ago so not at the very end, Burton Albion visited the Stadium of Light, won 2-1 and sent Sunderland down for the second successive season.
The fact that most of us were already resigned to relegation made it little easier to stomach and the Netflix documentary Sunderland Til I Die captured the misery in all its raw intensity.
Even though today’s draw does move us into second, is the result good enough? There will be naysayers but, let’s not forget, this was not our strongest side and it was our fourth game in how many days? Surely we’d have taken this position a month ago, wouldn’t we?
