Pete Sixsmith wasn’t there tonight, having chosen to watch Durham City play Ryhope CW and leave the Sunderland game to Bob Chapman, but he did forward Bob’s half time message, which was to the effect that we had hardly been in the game and Birmingham deserved their lead.
There was a second message at full time. We’ve come to expect seven words; unfortunately, we’ve also come to expect what they say:
Wouldn’t we love the problems of 2008 just now? Needing to beat Birmingham City to keep up our Premier League survival hopes on track, we did just that with goals from Daryl Murphy – a “neat finish from Kenwyne Jones’s knock-down,” said the BBC – and Rade Prica.
Ten years and a day on, the two teams meet again. It’s away and we still need points for survival, humiliatingly from the Championship. The 2008 win got Sunderland out of the bottom three and we finished 15th. Can we do it again? Our Birmingham City Who are You? interviewee went for 2-0 again, but in his sides favour. This is how Pete Sixsmith captured it back then, in a much shorter early manifestation of Sixer’s Soapbox …
Pete Sixsmith’s legendary journey around the years continues with a trip to England’s second city and 1976. That was the year the queen went to Birmingham to open the National Exhibition Centre but she doesn’t post anything on this site (at least, not under her own name) so we won’t be getting her reminiscences.
As if we needed them. Cue the chant…
“Aye aye aye aye, Sixsmith is better than Lizzie……”
Oops: this is a repeat: entries here closed though any appearing already will be honoured: enter at https://safc.blog/2018/01/birmingham-city-guess-the-score-meet-the-irish-fan-who-kept-faith/
With no unnecessary fanfare, here is the latest prize Guess the Score.
Can Chris Coleman secure the first back-to-back wins of his Sunderland career? Will we rise to the occasion or slump, having beaten Hull, to the customary after-the-Lord-Mayor’s-Show defeat?
Monsieur Salut writes: James Jenkinson is a breath of fresh air: a home and away regular with a burning passion for his club, Birmingham City. He is still studying – at University Degrees in Football, Sport and Events Industries in Wembley – -but hopes to became a TV presenter. We have only two quarrels: he thinks City will win on Tuesday night and also suspects we will go down …
Here’s a brief chance to give your view now that the transfer window has closed. The site will be busy soon, we’ll have views from Lars and Pete, plus Pete looking forward to Ipswich tomorrow, so this will only be around for the rest of today.
NB Guess the Score appeared twice by mistake. One or two entries appeared at the second item before I closed comments. Check below and at https://safc.blog/2018/01/birmingham-city-vs-safc-guess-the-score-two-in-a-row/ to make sure your choice has not already been taken – Ed
Given how rarely Sunderland win, it is worth noting that we have had SAFC-supporting winners of Guess the Score for each of the five Championship games where we’ve ended on top.
One of these was Mike Holligan, with whom I met up (with his brother-in-law Jim Ballantyn, already an acquaintance) during his recent brief visit from the Irish Republic to London.
Monsieur Salut adds some belated lines in homage to Jimmy Armfield – footballer, manager, sports reporter, NUJ member, broadcaster, church organ player, absolute gent …
The two news items seemed unseemly if read one after the other. Sanchez moved from Arsenal to Man Utd on a new weekly pay rate of hundreds of thousands. And word reached us of the death of Jimmy Armfield, whose biggest pay packet was £70 a week, as he told Salut! Sunderland back in 2011 (see the interview here).
Since the victory against Hull City, Chris Coleman has said his players – from young prospects such as Jake Clarke-Salter and Joel Asoro to the old pros John O’Shea and Lee Cattermole – deserve pats on the back. ‘I have stood here after a poor performance or a defeat [but] we look at it now – it is another win, five clean sheets in 11 games. It’s not all bad’. Sunderland supporters know all about false dawns but could this be the start of the way back and can Coleman succeed where so many predecessors have failed? Simon McFall, a freelance sportswriter, traces the pain of SAFC’s post-‘Bank of England club’ years but recognises the enduring passion and desire of the fans …
Monsieur Salut looks at the case study in eccentric football management that is Watford FC – a rarity among clubs in making Sunderland look stable and serene – and wonders whether sacking Marco Silva and installing yet another new boss will make the slightest difference to their prospects …
Let us be cruelly blunt. It is not how football should be but no one outside Watford bothers too much which of the main English divisions – Premier, Championship or Leagues One/Two – they play in. Remember how little the rest of football truly savours a Wear-Tyne derby and multiply the couldn’t-care-less-factor by a dozen.