Sunderland report cards: (8) Pete Sixsmith tastes the delight and despair

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For the final part of our series of end-of-season reports, we turn to Pete Sixsmith, whose previews, commentary and match analyses distinguish the pages of Salut! Sunderland, proving that the sum of the parts can indeed be greater than the whole. Concluding a fascinating collection of reviews published over the past week or so, Pete offers a balanced assessment of what Steve Bruce has achieved, and where he has under-achieved …

Another season gone, the 47th of my regular Sunderland-supporting life – and the third most successful if league positions are the sole criteria of a good season.

The only ones to beat it were the two seventh places under Peter Reid, so Steve Bruce has exceeded anything that Alan Brown, Ian McColl, Bob Stokoe, Jimmy Adamson, Ken Knighton, Alan Durban, Len Ashurst, Lawrie McMenemy, Dennis Smith, Malcolm Crosby, Terry Butcher, Mick Buxton, Howard Wilkinson, Mick McCarthy, Roy Keane and various assorted caretakers and stop gaps have achieved. And yet…….

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Sunderland report cards: the essential guide to our eight-part series

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Addick-tedKevin

In the end, the Positive Party succeeded in making its voice heard. Only the most naive supporter could expect the sort of post-January collapse we suffered to go unscrutinised, uncriticised. Equally, however, there were signs at various points of the season of real advances being made by Sunderland AFC and while no one should get carried away, it was right that these signs should be acknowledged in our contributors’ reports.

The eight Sunderland supporters who presented their reflections on the 2010-2011 season may not, when considered against a 40,000 average gate and the huge, absent diaspora, represent a scientific sample (even though the world is expected to take notice when an opinion poll is based on the views of 1,000 people drawn from a population exceeding 60m).

Even so, this is intended as a handy digest to a series Salut! Sunderland is proud to have published and offers brief extracts from each piece with a link leading to the full posting at the merest click of the subheading. And if the end-of-the-season partwork has run its course, rest assured the debate will go on …

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1) Arsenal 2) Man City 3) Wolves: the ‘Who are You?’ winners

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At each season’s end, we ask a group of judges to pore through up to 50 interviews with supporters of each team Sunderland faced in league and cup, and choose the best. Competition was tough; the panel was offered a non-binding shortlist that stretched to a dozen or so articles, and has reached its verdict …

The judging is over and we have our winners.

A superb season of “Who are You?” interviews, from which any of a dozen, maybe more, stood a decent chance of snatching a top three place in the annual awards, has produced its winners. And we are indebted to When Saturday Comes and Octopus Publishing for coming up with some prizes: a year’s subscription to the more than half-decent WSC, money to spend in the “shop” at the magazine’s website and a copy of the tremendous book of black and white football photography, John Tennant’s Football: the golden age.

Step forward, then, Tom Watt, a well-known NCO in the vast army of Arsenal supporters. In a close-run contest, Tom’s thoughtful, passionate answers were chosen by the Salut! Sunderland judging panel as the best of the lot.

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Sunderland report cards: (7) ‘Steve Bruce’s critics will eat their words’

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This is exactly what the series needed, as full-blown an endorsement of Steve Bruce as it is possible to imagine. Not because Martin Robson*, an exile in Vancouver, is necessarily right – all Salut! Sunderland readers will have a view on that – but because there has inevitably been a lot of criticism, despite the healthy finale, and it is important to see, acknowledge and then be able to assess the case for the defence …

After four decades of unfaltering allegiance, I could be forgiven for the following analogy: supporting Sunderland is a little bit like volunteering to stick your head and arms into a medieval stock in the middle of a thriving thoroughfare, inviting public humiliation and the scorn of those who pass by.

It’s a thankless slog. A pride-swallowing siege. An up and down ride-along with far more troughs than peaks. And so it was this last season.

The question is this. Are we making progress in the playing department? Are we on the right path? Is Steve Bruce the man to guide us to better times? I believe we are, and he is, and here’s why.

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Coming clean on Newcastle and Middlesbrough connections

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Cartoon for Mother & Baby by James Benn

A posting at the main Salut! site, which you can see by clicking this link, mentions the subject only in passing, but it was sufficient to inspire a cartoonist, James Benn, to come up with a great illustration. It got me thinking: we’re all meant to hate the Mags, they hate us. We both used to hate Boro, and them us, but what with all that’s happened down on Teesside, we’ve all but forgotten one another’s existence. Maybe we should just all get a life …

Pete Sixsmith made a telling comment here the other day that should have made every thinking Sunderland supporter reconsider the kneejerk anti-Mag mantras they – we – adopt, and vice versa.

He was reacting to Jeremy Robson’s amusing look at the story of the two lads, from either side of the Wear-Tyne divide, who had a wager on who would finish higher: the loser had to go to the other club’s shop and buy and wear a top.

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Sunderland report cards: (6) measuring progress, and winning the FA Cup again

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The thoughts of Bob Chapman grace the pages of Salut! Sunderland every so often and he seemed an obvious choice for the end-of-season reporting panel. Here is an honest appraisal, warts and all but with plenty of recognition where due, of a season that failed to shake Bob’s innate optimism …

I have watched Sunderland since the start of the 1964/5 season.

My father took me as a very excited nine-year-old to see his newly promoted team play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Fifteen-year-old Derek Foster played his second game in goal as a replacement for the injured Monty. You can still see MoTD footage on Youtube (duly dug out and included – ed). We lost 3-0 but I was heartened by the fact that in another six years I would almost certainly be making my debut for the team …

Ever the optimist, that’s me!

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Sunderland report cards: (5) my 40,000 reasons for demanding more guts

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Luke Harvey

The end-of-season reviews have been thought-provoking and varied, from M Salut’s own maybe excessive support for Steve Bruce – whose continued defence of the failure to replace Darren Bent defies logic – to the hard-hitting analysis offered by subsequent writers. Two, possibly three, remain to be fitted in before Pete Sixsmith has the final word. Here, Luke Harvey* discusses our respectable average attendances and asks the club to match the commitment he has made for next season …

“Twenty-five thousand empty seats…” came the chanting from burly shaven-headed males as the Newcastle-Sunderland free train trundled towards its destination.

??Needless to say my head was dipped low and any thoughts that popped into my head remained there; they were never verbalised as I was very much the minority among the crowd of travelling Newcastle fans.

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French Fancies: a day that broke some hearts in Monte Carlo

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First Lewis Hamilton got himself into trouble with Formula 1 race stewards after his misfired gag – “maybe it’s because I’m black …That’s what Ali G says,” he said with a smile about being penalised in the Monaco Grand Prix – and then Monaco went down. And this, to the relief of those without the least interest in le football, is the last French Fancies of the season …

Patrice Carteron

Well Patrice Carteron’s Dijon were already up, and yesterday Eric Roy’s Nice survived the dramatic final day of Ligue 1 despite losing at Valenciennes, so once-mighty Monaco joined once-mighty Nantes in France’s Championship equivalent, Ligue 2. There was nothing much at stake at the top, of course, because the title was already Lille’s.

Monaco’s fate was in their own hands, but the fixtures list left them a tough last game, against Lyon at home, and they lost 2-0. That meant they could stay up only if Nancy stumbled at home to already-relegated Lens. Nancy 4 Lens 0 soon snipped that lifeline.

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Sunderland report cards: (4) the curse of consistent inconsistency

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For our fourth end-of-season review, we turn to Malcolm Dawson, who has written some cracking articles for Salut! Sunderland and is warmly welcomed here whenever he chooses to write. Looking back, he salutes the quality play he has seen from SAFC and deplores the more dire performances, often against modest opposition; looking forward, he hopes we are not about to settle for mid-table obscurity …

It is hard to be dispassionate when talking about football and in particular about the the club you support. Witness the ire displayed by several Villa fans on this site when it was suggested that maybe Sunderland are a bigger club or the responses of some Arsenal supporters, when it was intimated that they are the sinners, as much as the sinned against. Witness too the back and forth “banter” between some of our regular contributors at the suggestion that Steve Bruce is or isn’t the answer to our prayers.

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Manchester United v Barcelona Soapbox: my homage to Catalonia

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Mesmerised by the sheer brilliance of Barcelona, who made Manchester United look what they are not (ordinary), Pete Sixsmith calms down long enough to reflect with gratitude and admiration on the Champions’ League final …

Long time readers of my ramblings may remember me drooling over the Spain team that walked away with Euro 2008. My particular favourite was Andrea Iniesta and I though that team was as close to perfection as you would get.

Cancel that statement, because I, and millions of others, have just witnessed a team performance that will be remembered by those who saw it as long as Real Madrid’s demolition of Eintracht Frankfurt has been by those of an earlier generation. The Barcelona side that summarily dismissed Manchester United in the Champions’ League Final is, without a doubt, the finest club side in history.

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