Salut! Sunderland
wishes to pay tribute to Niall Quinn, who has announced today that he is leaving Sunderland football club to return to Ireland and concentrate on business and family interests there.
It is little exaggeration to say it feels like the loss of a family member.
There is plenty right with football. The thrill of seeing your team reach the FA Cup 6th round, or producing matchwinning finishes two years running against the likes of Manchester City, would be enough on their own to prove the point. Billy Sharp’s t-shirt tribute to his baby son, who died aged just two days, was another example (as was the referee Darren Deadman’s decision to keep card in pocket as Sharp celebrated a goal by lifting his shirt to show the message “That’s for you son”).
Pete Sixsmith eulogises a thumpingly good display by Sunderland, heaping praise on supreme gifts and honest endeavour alike. He will return to the matter of the disappointingly low attendance but, for now, revels in the warm glow of resurgent times for the club …
Monsieur Salut is an unashamed admirer of Arsène Wenger’s. But Eric Sweeney, an occasional additional voice at Salut! Sunderland, combines appreciation for the job Martin O’Neill is doing at Sunderland with serious misgivings about yesterday’s once-mighty opposition …
Martin O’Neill springs from dressing room celebrations to rattle off a proud, cheerful post-match e-mail that encapsulates all that was good in the 2-0 win over Arsenal. Can anyone translate the bit about Kieran and training yesterday (a few hopelessly wayward potshots maybe)? …
This is where Pete Sixsmith captures the glory and shame, hope and despair, excitement and ennui of the Sunderland matchday experience. When, rarely, Pete is absent or delayed, a supersub does it for him and the seven-word verdict is preceded by an asterisk. Pete’s full analysis of the game will usually appear within a day or two.
Forget Arsenal being in disarray (not really, of course, but by their standards). This was a great victory, 100 per cent merited and showed precisely why Martin O’Neill manages at a very high level and Monsieur Salut manages at no level at all. I raised an eyebrow at the decision to start without a recognised striker. most of us agreeing that is not Sessegnon’s natural position. And we proceeded to score twice without reply, Sess having a storming game in which he constantly threatened in the centre and on the wing.
The latest review of the week is given over mostly to the thoughts of Anthony Oliveri*. He’s the staunch Gooner who came here after being asked at short notice to cover for the man who had promised to field our questions ahead of today’s game but then went absent with leave (retrospectively granted because he’d suffered a trapped nerve in the shoulder). “Ant” believes Arsenal or Sunderland will win the FA Cup and says SuperKev would have done well as a Gunner …
Can we hope for the same Arsenal to turn up at the Stadium of Light tomorrow night as crumbled in Milan? Were AC Milan so good that even if Arsenal played no better than on Wednesday, they’d still be good enough to beat us? Or are we facing another cup replay?
Arsenal are fourth in the Premier League, have reached the last 16 of the Champions League (and remain in the competition, if only mathematically) and play us in the last 16 of the FA Cup on Saturday. They are a club in profit, have enjoyed an extraordinary run of Champions League qualifications and attract admiration for their style of football throughout the game.
