The Manchester United ‘Who are You?’: champs despite City slaughter

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David, with son, at Old Trafford

Canadian, married to a Liverpudlian whose heart lies at Anfield and working with a diehard Mackem, David Tack* really ought to reconsider his allegiance. But it’s Manchester United for him and he’s as avid from afar as anyone whose journey to Old Trafford can be made on foot. I make no comment about the thought process that inspired his choice of club and his answers to Salut! Sunderland reveal a thinking man’s approach to sport. Sadly, for us, he sees Saturday’s game going to script …

Salut! Sunderland: If I wasn’t sure where to start, I am now: which Old Trafford goal feast do you want to talk about, the one against Arsenal or the six Man City put past you?

Neither and both I suppose. While I did enjoy seeing the Gooners get a spanking, I was certainly gutted by our spanking from City. Overall, I don’t think either result was good for the league. Games among the top teams in the division should be fierce and closely contested affairs. When they become blowouts I feel a bit cheated by having not seen a great competition among the best teams in the best league in the world.

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The Robson Report: let Doncaster’s Billy Sharp personify football’s soul

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Jeremy Robson


Did John Terry mouth a racist insult in “conversation” with Anton Ferdinand, or was he merely enquiring as to whether Anton erroneously thought he had done so? A number of players insist that Terry is not a racist; the facts have yet to be determined. Billy Sharp’s gesture, however, needed no interpretation. Jeremy Robson applauds Sharp, the bereaved father who scored a “goal from heaven”* (see clip below); you judge whether he is unduly harsh on JT …

Bill Shankly’s oft cited quotation about football being more important than life and death was mentioned again as recently as last week on Salut! Sunderland, in the title of the Rev Leo Osborn’s “Who are you?” article prior to the SAFC v Aston Villa game.

Leo, a staunch Villa fan but also a prominent churchman, said Shankly was wrong. I for one would not disagree. How can any sport, or game be considered more important than life itself?

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Bonfire night competition: name the firework that felled Villa’s Agbonlahor

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Need for speedImage: Marion O’Sullivan

Just a spot of fun, and Nov 5 is still a few days away.

But there is a serious enough underlying message. A small prize awaits the reader who comes up with the best name for the firework that, according to the report I am about to share, seemed to send poor Gabriel Agbonlahor reeling on Saturday.

We all know what happened next. Larsson, against whom the imaginary foul was given, accused Agbonlahor of cheating but Richard Dunne headed the resulting free kick past Westwood to put Villa ahead.

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The Aston Villa Soapbox: must we settle for mildly entertaining?

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Aston Villa, M Salut decided as he walked away from the Stadium of Light, are not a team of thugs. Darren Bent is doubtless “one greedy b******” (there are sensitive souls looking in), though I quarrel with the “only” of the chant; Agbonlahor gives a decent impersonation of a man in training for an Olympics diving medal and Richard Dunne can act like an immature and unpleasant schoolboy, as he did after conceding the foul that led to our second equaliser. For all that, it was not a dirty match and both sides did try to play. But Pete Sixsmith wonders whether “mildly entertaining” football is what both sets of fans must accept as their lot …

Twelve months ago, I was sitting in a darkened room with a cold towel over my head as I tried to get over the 5-1 drubbing at Sports Direct Park. It was probably the worst result in my Sunderland watching experience and, to be honest, I still haven’t fully recovered from it.

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Bruce’s Banter: ‘Wickham’s wonder, Seb’s fantastic delivery but not enough’

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After each game, Steve Bruce e-mails Salut! Sunderland – and a few thousand others – on his immediate post-match thoughts. This is what he made of the game against Villa, a 2-2 draw that could have gone either way and in which we scored good goals but conceded possession and dominance too easily …

Dear Colin,

Well I can’t deny the spirit of the team. It’s quite remarkable the way they didn’t give up.

I do have to be honest and say that in the second half we didn’t do enough. When you’re 2-1 down with four or five minutes to play it was great get a wonderful set piece from [Sebastian] Larsson.

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Salut!’s Week: Bolton, Aston Villa & corporate football’s ugly face

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Another busy week, another rough guide to Salut! Sunderland for those readers who cannot get here every day … please note that there may be delays this weekend in posting Bruce’s Banter and other post-match coverage. M Salut will be at the game, so will Mr Sixsmith and Ms Dawson and it will be case of who is able to get items posted first (bearing in mind that Sixer wouldn’t know how to) ….

Salut! Sunderland is about to undergo a makeover. It has been a long time coming but soon the home page will more closely resemble a newspaper format. This will bring the benefit of keeping especially good reads prominently displayed for several days rather than slipping ever further down before toppling off the bottom edge and plunging into the archives.

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Sorry Darren, sorry Aston Villa: it’s not a perfect world

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To boo or not to boo. Pete Sixsmith climbs on to his Soapbox to explain why feelings may be running a little high when Mr Bent takes the field, and why he probably won’t join in any barracking …

See also: the Aston Villa fan preview – with the Villa-supporting head of the Methodist Conference

Do we boo him or not? It’s a question that has exercised some of the finest minds of this generation – Sobs, Peter Horan, Joan Dawson, M Salut, Russell Henderson, all of them the equivalent of Bertrand Russell, Freddie Ayer and Aristotle (who was a bugger for the bottle, I believe).

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Aston Villa ‘Who are You?’: Shankly was wrong about football

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For Methodists, the Rev Leo Osborn* is, as President of the Methodist Conference, roughly equivalent to Archbishop of Canterbury (though the church has no supreme authority). He lives in the North East but avidly supports Aston Villa, our opponents on Saturday. Leo may have regretted his instant agreement to be this week’s “Who are You?” guest when he saw how many questions we’d lobbed his way. We’re chuffed that he answered them anyway. Look out for his forecast of a Sunderland win and a challenge to Bill Shankly’s “life or death” quotation …

Salut! Sunderland: Up until last weekend, Villa had made a considerably better start than Sunderland. With what minimum and maximum expectations did you approach the season?

To be honest my expectations were extremely few. That is often how I feel at the beginning of each season anyway but, for reasons to which we will come, they were even less this season. Mid-table at best.

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The Robson Report: killing football in ‘one foul swoop’

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Every decent football supporter was outraged by the Liverpool chief executive Ian Ayre’s repugnant call for changes to TV rights that would divert more and more money to a handful of “big” clubs. Jeremy Robson is surprised more attention was not given to another corporate threat to the national game, this time from Suits of the imported variety …

Ten of the 20 current Premier League clubs are foreign owned. This would have been unthinkable even a decade ago.

Of the current crop it was Fulham who were the first to be taken over by a foreign investor (Mohammed al Fayed), in 1997, when they were in the third tier. Much has changed in a short period (and that’s no pun or reference to our owner and chairman).

Why is this significant? What difference does it make where the money comes from?

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