Consider the mess we’re in and you could come up with a decent argument in favour of delaying making the player-of-the-season award until our fate is clear.

Stay up, especially if we can somehow manage to do so in style, and enough people will stop behind at teatime on Sunday to make Danny Collins feel special as he collects his totally deserved honour, matched by a similar award – for the second consecutive season – in the supporters’ poll. Go down and a discreet handover – and handshakes – in the players’ bar would probably suffice.

But no, it will happen before the Chelsea game kicks off. It is not a huge misjudgement, but it seems like a misjudgement all the same.

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The romantic in me says Sunderland will finally produce a performance worthy of our magnificent fans and beat Chelsea. The realist in me, er, can just shut up!
For our last Who Are They? feature of the season, we – by which I mean the Colin part of Salut! Sunderland – could not only have turned to a past contributor, David “Sid” Millward, but joined him on a junket via Grand Central and one or other of the SoL corporate bunkers.
I have chosen to stay in France – or rather the sight of the bank balance, as much as Sid being a Chelski fan, dictated that I should – and watch the game on some dodgy web link.
So Sid wasn’t asked to pen some more thoughts. Step forward instead Jerry Evans, even older than the old codgers at Salut! Sunderland but seen in action above with his grandson Nicholas. Jerry’s musings – return here tomorrow and you’ll see why he thinks people like the admirable Jeremy Robson are wrong to hate the Mags – make him a late entrant for the judging currently in progress for our first annual award. And guess who, according to the romantic in him, will win (Sunday’s game, not the award) …

So many years have seen me before the mast at Stamford Bridge that my name has changed from time to time – maybe to protect me because of my football allegiance.

Jeremy Evans was born in wartime – the end of 1939 – but I was known to the family as Jem by the time Great Uncle Bill sat me on his knee at Kingston in 1948 and declared that as I had a burgeoning interest in the game I must go and watch Chelsea play, as he himself had been doing since the year dot.

I dutifully obeyed, of course, and on April 16 1949 stood on the huge west banking at The Bridge for the first time, watching the powerful Derby County easily dispatch the Blues 3-0. I must have thought: “This is how it is. Visitors are strong, and they beat us because we are not very good.”

And for many years that simplistic verdict was not far off the mark. Incidentally, Sunderland, who finished eighth in 48/49, had a 3-0/1-0 double over Chelsea that season.

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So we saved the biggest, scariest matchday of the season for last. The performance at Portsmouth reinforced doubts about our ability to claw our own way out of trouble. But Colin Randall doesn’t need to think back far to a time when we were beating Chelsea for fun …

Prizes are being solicited, and winners chosen, in the great Salut! Sunderland “Who are They?” awards, to be presented to the writers of the best previews contributed this season by supporters of opposing teams.

But no prizes are offered to readers who can identify the two consecutive seasons in which games between Sunderland and Chelsea ended as above.

Come back soon after the season ends for news of the awardwinners. Come back tomorrow for a Chelsea fan’s preview – included as a late entrant for the judges – of Sunday’s game.

And savour the above clip as a reminder of better times for Sunderland AFC before reading on …

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We can all envisage the nightmare scenario at 10 to six on Sunday: the scores stand at Aston Villa 1 Newcastle 1 … Hull 0 Man United 1 … Sunderland 0 Chelsea 5.
Suddenly, three last-second penalties are awarded: to Hull, the Mags and us. You can work out the rest: Cisse sends the goalie the wrong way but hits the post, Hull survive on equal goal difference, but more scored, and the Mags climb above us.
Pete Sixsmith, disconsolate and angry after last night’s shambles at Fratton Park, actually thinks it will be even more clear cut. His seven-word verdict last night did not have the defensive horror show “threatens” relegation but “means relegation”; only my editing made it less pessimistic;. Similarly, there was no question mark in his suggested headline for this piece. What follows is not for the faint hearted …

When I started doing these pieces 18 months ago, Colin said he wanted thoughtful and reflective articles, done after the din of battle had died away and there was time to take a long view. You could work out your emotions, positive and negative, and give a balanced and calm verdict on what you had seen, thereby enabling readers all over the world to get the considered view from the world’s greatest football club.

Well ******** to that.

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So what is Djibril feeling this morning? Anguish at Olympique de Marseille’s spectacular failure last night – losing 3-1 at home to Lyon (see it below) and now looking unlikely French champions – or a told-you-so thought or two about OM’s stupidity in not having kept him to be sure of success?

Amid the debris of OM’s weekend, I came across the name of Anthony Le Tallec, who scored twice for Le Mans in their game against OM’s rivals for the title, Bordeaux. Le Mans still lost 3-2 and remain a bit like us, nervously looking over their shoulders at the bottom three places.

But Le Tallec – pictured at the French football blog Pleine Lucarne – obviously has something we saw little of at Sunderland since he also got a goal for Le Mans a few weeks ago against Lyon. I stand to be corrected* but remember only one for us (against Fulham in our solitary home win when we last went down); three in a month or so against top three sides, albeit in France, suggests a man who knows where the goal is.

* And have just been corrected. At the Blackcats forum, Terry McLoughlin tells me he scored three League goals, one FA Cup goal and one League Cup goal for us. Mick Gouldings adds: “Actually, I believe he was top scorer, or joint top scorer for us for the season, with something like 4, 5 or 6 goals – most of which were in the League Cup.”

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Stranger things have happened in football than both Hull and the Mags winning next week and us not. So can we for once forget resting incautious hopes on combinations of last-day results going our way? Think back over Sunderland’s history and you’ll quickly see why the question is asked. The Lads owe it to us to beat Pompey tomorrow and achieve safety on their own merits. Pete Sixsmith found a way to cope with the tension …

What do you do at this stage of the season when we are playing on the Monday and there are three important games taking place on the Saturday? One friend took off to Bath for a University reunion, others began a three day booze-a-thon in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, while Jonah stayed at home to bite his finger nails to the knuckle.

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… to Fulham, Villa and Bolton for doing all we would have wanted.

15 Portsmouth 36 -20 38
16 Sunderland 36 -17 36
17 Hull 37 -24 35
18 Newcastle 37 -18 34
19 Middlesbrough 37 -28 32
20 West Brom 36 -29 31

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Today’s edition of The National, Abu Dhabi carries, as the cover story on Sport, the fruits of some work of mine on this season’s revival of Olympique de Marseille. For OM, a bit like for us, but at a different end of our respective leagues, a lot depends on this weekend’s results.

If OM win tomorrow against Lyon, champions for the past seven seasons but effectively out of the race, they’ll be on course for their own first title since the 1992-93 one was taken from them over corruption allegations.

If they lose or draw, and Bordeaux take three points tonight, it will start looking more like second place for them; today starts with the two clubs level on points and very close on goal difference.

Pete Sixsmith challenged me to get Djibril Cisse into the piece and since I had 2,000 words to play with and Cisse is deeply associated with OM, and indeed on loan to us from them, that was hardly a problem.

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News of a prize. Maybe even prizes. No Sunderland supporter, however, need apply. More of that later today.

In the meantime, we have the weekend to tell us just how important Portsmouth v Sunderland will be on Monday night.

But even if the Mags, Boro, West Brom and Hull all lose, we cannot go into the game at Fratton Park thinking defeat won’t matter.

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