Just a quick acknowledgement that the result we wanted, a Blackpool victory in the Championship playoff final, came to pass.
As the goals flew in during the first half of a game the BBC called “at times breathtaking”, one Salut! Sunderland regular, watching in Canada, urged all his mates on the Blackcats e-mail loop to drop all else to tune in.
Life is about more than annoying those hypersensitive fans of Arsenal. There’s a potentially terrific game today to decide who takes the third vacant slot in the Premier League …
Why should we want Blackpool to beat Cardiff at Wembley and take Premier League football to the Lancashire seaside, if only for one season?
Salut! Sunderland is resolutely club before country. But it will not avoid being caught up in the excitement of the World Cup in South Africa.
Denilson And Eduardo
Image: wonker
That’s it as far as Salut! Sunderland and Eduardo are concerned. He dived, won his penalty, got pilloried, had a question named after him at this site. But it is time to move on, pray – without great expectation – for a cheating-free World Cup and also remember that Arsenal fans were divided on the incident and what it said about the game …
All responses, even those confusing argument with abuse, will be posted but spam threat makes moderation unavoidable …
Words written, prize awarded. You might have hoped there’d be no more about diving. No such luck.
Salut! Sunderland confidently predicts yet another divefest at the 2010 World Cup. We won’t even be arrogant enough to claim England and our honorary second team Paraguay – an exception to the “no second team” rule for this summer only – will rise at all times above the temptation to cheat, much as we hope they do.
Seen enough manifestos to last a liftetime, or at least until Cameron is forced to call another election? Well, here’s another all the same. “Gizza job, I can do that,” says Pete Sixsmith, putting on Yosser Hughes’s best suit to be interviewed for the vacancies left by Lord Triesman’s tumble from grace …
Once again, the Football Association is plunged into turmoil as fearless hacks from the Mail On Sunday uncover Chairman Triesman as a xenophobic ranter, accusing Russia and Spain/Portugal as being in cahoots over the 2018 World Cup bid.
Arsenal fans will pounce on the irony of a Birmingham fan winning something to do with fair play and inspired by Eduardo. But the issues are separate, and Kevin Ball is a deserving winner …
We’re open to accusations of cheating ourselves, that we manipulated the result to ensure yet another Mackem connection to Salut! Sunderland competition prizewinners, if only in name.
But look at the replies people gave and Kevin Ball, who runs the Birmingham fan site Joys and Sorrows fully merits his selection as winner of our Pretend Fair Play league, inspired by rival fans’ responses to the Eduardo question: would you take – gladly or guiltily – or almost wish you could decline a trophy/title/survival won by a penalty scored after a blatant dive?
One last pop at Eduardo for that extraordinary dive against Celtic and then all will be forgiven. The unfinished business is that we have one more prize to award, for the winner of our Pretend Fair Play league. The prize itself falls below Euromillions levels …
All season long, since Mr Eduardo’s bid for Olympic glory, but in a sport other than football, against Celtic in the Champions’ League, Salut! Sunderland has posed the same question to virtually every fan of a rival club who has taken part in our Who Are You? series.
The team has been ordered to Mr Sixsmith’s study. They fear the worst after that dire mid-season run, the unfulfilled promise, the indiscipline and the damp squib of a season’s ending. But no, Sir is in a good mood. He sees really encouraging signs. Here, in our final review of the season, those signs are assessed by a man who has provided exemplary analysis of Sunderland AFC week after week …
We would all agree, I think, that the season just gone has been an improvement on the last two. I think that we would all agree the dip in mid season was worrying. I think we would all agree that the disciplinary record has been poor and needs to improve.
So, let’s try to put a different slant on 2009-10. Let’s look at where we were four years ago and let’s look at where we are now in the overall context of the Premier League.
Honourable mentions, too, are due to our other shortlisted candidates – read the full list by clicking here – but here are the citations from our judges for their Top Three choices in the annual Salut! Sunderland awards …
So the shortlist for the Who Are You? competition stretched to 10 entries, chosen by me from the dozens published at Salut! Sunderland – more than the number of teams we played since there were often two or more contributors – during the 2009-2010 season.
Lord Triesman’s capacity for suspecting foul play has spread. Was our competition result fixed to ensure some reflected Mackem glory? Where’s Melissa Jacobs, and the transcript of her text messages, when you need her? Writs may follow …
The first stone has been thrown.
From one Dewsburywolf, at the Molineux Mix site, comes the first challenge to the integrity of the four wise men who judged Salut! Sunderland’s glittering Who Are You? competition and, on an aggregate of their votes, awarded the prizes to 1) Manchester City 2) Hull City and 3) Wolverhampton Wanderers.
