Soapbox: Arsenal here we come (be afraid)

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soapbox


Earlier in the season, it seemed we could pick up points against the top teams while underperforming against the rest. Now we just underperform against everyone. Or can we snatch victory – even in the shape of a draw – from the jaws of much predicted defeat at the Emirates tomorrow? Pete Sixsmith prepares for a long day ..

So, Saturday sees my first Sunderland away game of 2010. Having missed Chelsea (too expensive), Portsmouth in the Cup (preferred Roker Park, Stotfold in the FA Vase) and the midweek excursions to Goodison and Fratton Parks (thanks, PL Computer), I am back on the road at 6.30 am tomorrow, armed with Walkman, Guardian, book, reading light, pies and sandwiches, heading for Ashburton Grove in order to watch the third best team in the Premier League play the thirteenth.

Do I travel with any degree of optimism? Well, you have to hope, but I can’t really see anything coming of it. We have a reduced midfield and a defence that leaks more readily than an embittered civil servant. Recently, we have slung away eight points because of shoddy defending in the last 10 minutes. Had we held on for two of those games, we could be looking upwards at Fulham rather than downwards at Wolves.

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Remembered: Arsenal (P Danson as 12th man) 2 Sunderland 0

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highIt started as a harmless gag on the Blackcats list. E-mails from the list’s subscribers – located in various corners of the world – have been suffering delay or gone missing or arrived out of sequence .. you name the problem and the list has had it.

On the west coast of America, an exiled Mackem thought he’d get his verdict in early on Arsenal in case the loop crashed altogether or contrived to exclude some of its subscribers before we even had a chance to record another defeat.

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Prime Minister drawn into women’s football scandal

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gordonbrown

It had to happen sooner or later. Gordon Brown has become embroiled in the scandal over the exclusion of Sunderland Women’s football club from the proposed Super League of eight teams – despite being current Premier League leaders, FA (Women’s) Cup finalists last season and a team containing nine international players at different levels.

The FA has been maintaining the apparent fiction that no decision has yet been made, even though the club says it has been told – by, presumably, the FA – that Sunderland’s strong case for a place has been brushed aside on commercial and marketing grounds.

Among the many football supporters outraged by this latest piece of discriminatory nonsense from the FA were non-Sunderland fans, including Wull Rowan from our good friends at FootballUnited (futd.com).

Will decided to start a petition with the aim of shaming the FA into making the decision that would surely strike any neutral observer as decent and fair: offer Sunderland WFC a place.

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Who are you? We’re Arsenal (and Barca, Brazil and Argentina!)

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arsenalv.hull


The tension is beginning to build. Sunderland have a strong strike force and, on paper, a semi-viable defence but no one knows quite how Steve Bruce will fashion a midfield from depleted ranks. Arsenal have problems, too, from injuries of their own to question marks over some of Arsène Wenger’s players (though Sod’s Law decrees that the hapless, fumbling Lukasz Fabianski would have a blinder if he played against us). We turned again to New York City and Fatima al Shamsi*, a rare Man City-loathing Emirati (above, left, with her sister Alyazhah), for a few more nuggets of wisdom from the world of gloryseeking Goonerworship. Fatima is charitable about SAFC, pragmatic about cheating, unladylike about Barcelona’s Ibrahimovic and restrained in her match forecast …


What about Arsenal’s season? Are you still right behind Arsène Wenger or do you feel you need someone else to move you on? I take it you’ve been following your Gunners from afar.

Unfortunately still watching them predominantly on my laptop although I have made a few trips to sports cafés whenever we’ve had an 11am kick off (NYC time). I like to be behind Arsene but our starting 11 against ManU was a horrible choice , although to be fair I’m not too sure what our alternative options could have been given the state of our injuries and such. I’m starting to get frustrated (about time too) but despite that, I still have faith in our crazy French man. What we do need is to get a decent experienced player to help pull the talent we already have all together – and I don’t count Sol Campbell as one, despite his goal against Porto this week. also more importantly we need to look into some decent goalkeepers neither Almunia nor Fabianski play convincingly enough to be part of a top team.

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Who are you? We’re Arsenal (and we’re right at the top!)

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How many Salut! Sunderland readers scroll down the right-hand sidebar and then click on Soccerlinks? If you do, you’ll know that since the technical glitch that put us in something like 565th place, we’ve climbed back up to the top 100 and, when things are busy here, get as high as 35th. For this week’s Who Are They? candidate, we went straight to the top of the charts to find Chris Borg*, whose site, The Gunning Hawk pulls in an average of more than 5,000 visitors daily. Chris makes it all sound so easy. Sunderland’s task in trying to avoid defeat at the Emirates on Saturday is a long way from easy. Is our only hope that Porto soften them up? …

So, an easy one to keep your slender title hopes alive. I take it you couldn’t have wished for any better fixture, after beating Liverpool to stay on course, than us at home …

On paper, it is an easy game but one not to be underestimated. After all, you’ve got Bent up there, third in the top scorer list and our backline has been pretty shaky in recent appearances.

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Good news, bad news ahead of the Emirates

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Lots of Arsenal fans were drawn into some great crack here over the weekend. Some of them said kind things, but they are probably all looking at this Saturday as a home banker. That sort of means we have nothing to lose. But there’s a lot of pride to play for after the recent dismal run, and no one turning out for us at the Emirates should do so without at least the hope in his heart of pulling off a result …

Confirmation that Jordan Henderson is out for six weeks – not three as I believed from one earlier report – is unwelcome in that his absence, added to Andy Reid’s injury, robs us of most of what little midfield creativity we seem to possess.

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Arsenal still a week away, this is as good as it gets

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haway

What is it about a weekend without a Sunderland game that makes life seem good? Answers on postcards please. It’s made Colin Randall feel so good that he is taking leave of his senses and working himself into an implausibly optimistic frenzy about Arsenal away a week from now. He’s taken a pill and should be better soon …

Some great answers arrived today from the Arsenal fan who is previewing next week’s game at the Emirates for Salut! Sunderland.

“On paper an easy game – but not one to be underestimated,” is how he puts it. Come back a few days from now to see what else he has to say about us and them, but that seemed a remarkably kind – or diplomatic – summary of the how the match is likely to turn out.

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Websites and parasites: fighting back

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rat trap

No game this weekend – though we should, of course, have been playing Southampton in the FA Cup – so it seems the right time to deal with a spot of necessary admin: how to combat a scourge of the internet age …


Salut! Sunderland, and its sister sites Salut! , Salut! Live and Salut! North, have been infested by an ugly, virulent pest called the website parasite.

The aim of the people posting comments which appear at first glance to be genuine, but can quickly be seen to be bogus and probably generated by computers, is to produce artificially inflated stats for visits to their own, usually unrelated sites or promote Viagra, medicines or whatever else they are trying to flog.

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