Chelsea ‘Who are You?’: on idolising Zola, hating Newcastle

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We want a re-run of Dec 4 1999 so please let the Everton cup game have tired them out; he wants Malouda to clinch a 1-0 revenge win. David Harding*, a Fleet Street foreign editor, has supported Chelsea since early boyhood and has written a book about a special hero, Gianfranco Zola,. After yesterday’s sampler, this is the full interview with refreshing thoughts on money-driven success, this season’s Premier shakeup, the Darren Bent transfer and Sunderland players he’d welcome in Blue …

Salut! Sunderland:
Thrashed at home by Sunderland. We were ecstatic, but did subsequent results for Chelsea make it less an achievement than it seemed?

Not at all. I am not saying this to be polite but Sunderland’s performance that day was one of the best by an away team at Stamford Bridge in recent seasons. The passing and movement was wonderful. Onuoha’s goal would be replayed constantly if his name was spelt Rooney. Welbeck was sensational that day. If I was a Sunderland fan the thing I would have cherished most after my joy/laughter at the scoreline had finally died down was the performance. It showed there is a real team there, not an XI capable of fashioning a one-off result. It ranks alongside the Inter Milan (0-1, though it should have been more), Everton (3-3, Fellaini was magnificent) and Liverpool (0-1 in 2008) games in recent years in terms of away teams’ performances at the Bridge.
I don’t think our other many defeats this season should diminish the achievement. We were dire against Liverpool and Wolves, lucky at Blackburn but Sunderland thrashed us. It was notable also that it was the first time I can remember a Steve Bruce team coming to Stamford Bridge and attacking.

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The Chelsea interview: ‘sacrilege, but Kerry Dixon left me cold’

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For the latest feature in Salut! Sunderland‘s “Who are You?” series, David Harding, a Chelsea fan who has written books on Gianfranco Zola and, er, A**n She**r, covers a lot of ground: from his club’s Unloved status and Abramovich’s billions to his thoughts on cheating and Sunderland (positive) and Newcastle (not). He sympathises with the late Ian Porterfield (our hero, less successful as the Blues’ manager) but drools over another of those Sunderland lads who never played for his home town team …

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SAFC v Chelsea: from gloom to boom in under two years

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Tuesday’s match still seems ages away, so stand by for a long buildup.

At the end of the season before last, we faced Chelsea at home on the last day, threatened with relegation if we lost and both Newcastle United and Hull won. Luckily, and it was luck since we predictably lost our game (3-2), they both lost and it was a case of Toon Doon. Ahead of next week’s game at the Stadium of Light, which finds SAFC in hugely different spirits, we reproduce from May 2009 this article looking back at Lads v Chelsea encounters of the Peter Reid era …

Salut! Sunderland: May 2009

So we saved the biggest, scariest matchday of the season for last. The performance at Portsmouth (defeated 3-1) reinforced doubts about our ability to claw our own way out of trouble. We approached the Chelsea game with justified trepidation. Yet it hadn’t been so long since we’d seemed to be beating them for fun.

The Salut! Sunderland headline back then was: Lads v Chelsea: what’s the likeliest outcome – 0-4, 4-1, 1-0, 4-2?

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Blackpool fine not fine by me

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In which Jeremy Robson sticks up for Ian Holloway in his hour of need …

At the start of the season every club is required to submit the names of 25 players who will make up their squad for the coming season.

Some of us must wonder what the point of this is, as you can add players and remove them. This is what happened to Anton Ferdinand. He didn’t even have a squad number to begin the season, but soon enough he was in the squad and starting games. So what purpose does this 25 man list serve? I haven’t the foggiest idea!

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Free Spurs tickets – and a challenge – for younger fans

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Andy Gray can wait. First the good news: Salut! Sunderland has two free tickets for SAFC v Tottenham Hotspur on Feb 12 up for grabs. Who knows? It could be a game that enables us to rise above Spurs in the top six.

Now the better news: all you need to do to have a chance of winning them is to post a comment to Salut! Sunderland. Since I am about to remind readers of a fine initiative in which 16-25 year olds are encouraged to give up a small amount of their time in a good cause, I would prefer the tickets to go to younger readers. But that is not a condition of entry: I will award them to the writer of what I judge to be the best comment posted ON ANY SUBJECT, here or at the foot on another Salut! Sunderland article, between now and 9am GMT on Saturday Feb 5.

Just when everyone has knives out for Andy Gray, it is worth reminding ourselves that beyond this essentially pathetic little row, arguably less important a broadcasting issue than the lamentable BBC cuts, Gray is not an irredeemable monster.

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Does Andy Gray’s downfall reveal Sky’s murky clouds?

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Andy Gray may have shown weaknesses for arrogance and vulgarity. He may scarcely have deserved £1.7m a year however good he was considered to be as Sky’s principal football pundit and analyst. But, asks Birflatt Boy, could questionable motives be at play in the broadcaster’s haste to throw the book at him? …

Andy Gray has been sacked after countless years of acting as the linchpin of Sky’s football coverage. There are a lot of people who seem as if they couldn’t care less about his dismissal, or are very pleased to see the back of him.

Even the most unpopular presenters were probably popular at some time. Gray has become increasingly arrogant in the eyes of many viewers who have also reached a state of boredom akin to rigor mortis with his diagrams and tactics board.

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Terry Deary: Horrible Histories, horrible modern football

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Are you sitting comfortably? That was how I introduced an interview back in 2002 with Terry Deary, bestselling author and lifelong Sunderland fan.

It was, of course, part of the Wear Down South series on celebrity supporters; Terry may not be a famous-for-being-famous, Newcastle-style celeb supporter (Ant, Dec and Cheryl springing effortlessly to mind), but he does occupy a lofty position in the field of literature, specifically books for children. Those books, as I explained back then, sell or disappear from library shelves faster than Enid Blyton: 210 titles in 41 languages at the last count, with worldwide sales exceeding 25 million. And that’s just part of Terry’s success story, as you shall discover. The last time we updated the interview, he was warming to the Roy Keane regime, full of admiration for a “rare manager who makes no excuses (injuries, bad refs, bad luck etc.) and doesn’t whinge when things go wrong”.

Time for another catch-up, but now something has gone very wrong, wrong enough to interrupt Terry’s record of season ticket ownership. It starts harmlessly enough, but then gets blood-curdlingly sinister as he sticks a knife into the heart of modern football. Steve Bruce had best not be shown this …

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Villa’s Gérard Houllier: faites entrer l’accusé

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GuillotineAmnesty International

Bring in the defendant, indeed. Gérard Houllier stands accused, in his own imagination, of the heinous crime of being French. Everyone else has all but forgotten Darren Bent. Just a bad dream. But M Houllier, with whatever encouragement he derives from the auld alliance (his Scottish sidekick, l’ancien superplongeur Gary McAllister), cannot let go. The Villa boss has discovered why he’s had such flak. You guessed it, and so did our mysterious chroniqueur, Birflatt Boy: it’s just our way of re-opening the 100 years’ War …

He thinks it’s because he’s French! Houllier that is!

He’s a funny bloke Gérard Houllier isn’t he? He received widespread benevolence during his time at Anfield. Everyone looked at him as if he was a favourite uncle.

In no time at all since his arrival at Villa Park he has become something of a public menace. His antics in the transfer market have made him look like a complete prat.

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Soapbox: Blackpool rocks, Bent saga rolls on

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With a long wait before our next game, we must now endure a week of speculation about comings and goings (surely Ricardo Fuller, a sub more often than he starts at Stoke, is not really demanding £60,000 a week as reported today; what will Mr Bent make of that?). Pete Sixsmith, has all these things in mind as he returns from a happy trip to the seaside …

That’s more like it. After a week where of non stop chat from players, managers and fans, we finally got down to what the game is all about – actually playing football.

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