Chelsea came calling before Arsenal’s credit downgrade

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The Chelsea Blog repeated last season’s exercise and popped a few questions our way about 2011-2012.

No great original thought appears in the replies, but I place them on record so that Salut! Sunderland readers can:

* Tell me I’m spot on

* Offer a sharper assessment

* Come back later to tell me to say how wrong I was

I’d also add that my answers would be slightly different had the questions been posed today and not a couple of weeks ago.

News from the Emirates, for example, would have made me wonder about Arsenal’s chances of making the top four. I hate to say it but fear our opponents for tomorrow’s opening game will sneak in and grab the Gunners’ slot … that is a shame because M Salut is a fully paid-up admirer of M Wenger and would be sad to see his club slip down the pecking order.

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Liverpool v Sunderland: here we go again

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So the game is on, the season will kick off after all – and Pete Sixsmith chooses to look back as well as forwards …

Saturday sees M Salut and moi starting our 48th season as fully committed Sunderland supporters. In 1963, we lined up with the likes of Jimmy Montgomery, Charlie Hurley, Martin Harvey and Johnny Crossan. This year, we have Kieran Westwood, Titus Bramble, Lee Cattermole and Stephane Sessegnon. Have things got any better?

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Soapbox: a future behind closed doors for our totally Tote Cupwinners

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As expected, Pete Sixsmith found plenty to say about last night’s big, OK biggish, match – including his dismay at Sunderland AFC’s apparent determination to play most of this season’s second-string home games with the public barred …


An agreeable start to Sunderland’s competitive season saw the Reserves (never again to be referred to as “The Stiffs”) win the Tote Cup in a decent game against the mighty, mighty Walsall at a quiet and rather damp Eppleton CW.

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The Liverpool ‘Who Are You?’: a daughter speaks

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I may be proved wrong. The Liverpool supporter who faithfully promised to produce answers by yesterday may still resurface (he’s been silent for a week). We don’t even know yet whether the match will be on. But Salut! Sunderland cannot start the season on a blank, so turned to a disloyally Red, as opposed to Red and White, fan in the family. Lets hear from Nathalie Randall* , a terrific little footballer herself …


Salut! Sunderland:
As I write, Kenny Dalglish has spent an estimated £100m in an attempt to get Liverpool back into the top four. More can be expected before we kick off but is he on the right track?

After our recent track record under Hicks and Gillette with spending millions and getting nowhere but in severe debt, I am a little sceptical of the amount we have spent on players like Downing, Carroll and Henderson. However I think the players we have bought is a promising sign for the future. I just wish we hadn’t spent so much to get them!

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Hail the Reserves, Cup Final conquerors of Walsall

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It is always a pleasure to receive an upbeat text message from a Sunderland match I haven’t been able to attend (we won’t go into how many of those there are these days).

Pete Sixsmith’s, from the Eppleton CW ground, read last night:

We are now the proud holders of the Tote Cup after beating the mighty Walsall 3-0. Cook and Tounkare (2)

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You want optimism; here are happy noises from the Zoo

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Predictions, predictions … everyone’s at it, with the possible exception of the young lady photographed (you’ll need to buy Zoo or go to their site, link below, if you disapprove of the tasteful crop). Us? We cannot predict whether the matches will be on, thanks to the activities of the National Association of Scummy Toe-rags and Yobs (NASTY), but we do have good feelings about the new season once it is allowed to get under way …


When we ran Luke Harvey’s upbeat piece, looking forward to the new season with unabated joy, one or two Salut! Sunderland readers warmly welcomed what one, Davey, called “a refreshing change from all the doom and gloom merchants writing here”.

Well, here is some more of the same medicine.

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Soapbox: is James McClean our new Johnny Crossan?

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The signing of a promising prospect from Derry City inspires Pete Sixsmith to reminisce about another Sunderland product of that club, the charismatic Johnny Crossan. There’s also a brilliant anecdote recalling the day another SAFC supporter was invited to play with the great man …


At a time when the opening day of the Premier League season is in doubt because of the large scale disorder that is sweeping parts of the country, it may well be no bad thing to look back to the calm and peaceful days of the 1960s when most people had an awareness of where they stood in society.

The catalyst for this piece of nostalgia is the arrival of James McClean from Derry City for the relatively modest sum of £350,000. He’s a left winger, highly regarded by both FAs on that divided island, who will with luck turn out to be as successful at Sunderland as another Derry boy, one John Albert Crossan was between 1962 and 1965.

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Luke’s World: bring on Liverpool and Newcastle. I can’t wait

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Luke Harvey, another of our regular writers, offers a hardcore enthusiast’s welcome to the return – gormless rioters permitting – of the football season …

You’ll have heard the rumours: football is back.

It doesn’t feel like very long since the season ended. For Manchester United fans I’m sure the defeat at the hands of Barcelona is still providing a dull ache somewhere within, despite the FA Community Shield victory over Man City.

But the football league is definitely back, and it will surely provide the thrills and spills as well as plenty of other assorted clichés along the way.

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How to end gamesmanship and cheating: pink mittens and goggles

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Ken Gambles*, a stalwart of the North Yorkshire branch of the Sunderland AFC Supporters’ Association, casts a whimsical eye over footballers’ habits he’d go to unusual lengths to stamp out …

Despite being a traditionalist. I amazed myself at how quickly I came to adapt to the back-pass law, penalty shoot-outs and even Sky’s razzmatazz.

There remain, however, some aspects of the game which consistently annoy and spoil enjoyment of the match – and I don’t just mean a Sunderland defeat.

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