John McCormick writes – I do remember a trip to the Old Den in the ’70s but like Pete Sixsmith, I struggle to remember seeing Millwall at Roker and it’s possible I never did. From 1970 I was a student down south in Yorkshire and I often played sport rather than watched it. I did get back to some games so I can’t rule this one out, especially as it was played in May, but Pete’s account includes a player who, like the game, stirs nothing in what’s left of my memory. Luckily, that’s not the case with Mr Sixsmith:
An ominous reunion with our former boss looms. Portrait of Steve Bruce by Owen Lennox, an acclaimed Sunderland artist
Sunderland’s shameful home record will become officially the worst in English football history on Saturday if Millwall are not beaten at the Stadium of Light. Nineteen games – 18 in the Premier League and Championship and one in the FA Cup – have passed since a scrappy 1-0 defeat of Watford in December last year. That is a winless home run shared by Dagenham and Redbridge, Derby County and Nottingham Forest. Are we really about to make the record our own? Stand by for a bleak assessment of our club’s present crisis …
Perhaps the best that can be said about the visit to Aston Villa next Tuesday is that at least Sunderland won’t be at home. The match comes four days after the managerless club must beat Millwall to avoid setting that wholly unwanted record for failing to win at home.
What does Bobby Gurney have in common with Tony Adams, Jimmy Armfield, Billy Liddell, Matt Le Tissier, Sam Bartram, Packie Bonner, Jamie Carragher and Jack Charlton? All were one-club players, each clocking up hundreds of games without ever leaving for bigger, better, richer or more fashionable teams.
Silksworth-born and starting at Bishop Auckland, Gurney scored 228 goals in league and cup, the highest tally in Sunderland’s history, in 390 games for what was his only professional club in a career stretching from 1926 to 1944. See Stat Cat site for all the fascinating detail.
Will we ever see his like, their likes, again in an age when players and managers seem to regard clubs as mere stepping stones and football owners, in common with most employers, give the impression they would struggle to spell loyalty let alone demonstrate it?
As the laborious and uninspiringly low-profile search for a new manager goes on, Sunderland return to Championship action with only a month left of the year since we last won at home.
Can we finally get three points at the Stadium of Light without needing three games to do so? Will Ellis Short accuse the media of making it up if we don’t?
Just when you thought being bottom of the Championship made you safe from such things, along comes a website that actually calls itself DirtyPlayers.co.uk and calls into question our fond collective belief that in Lee Cattermole, Sunderland have the most cultured, gentlest and fairest of players without thought of tripping, crunching, nudging or pulling back opponents.
How long before people will be betting again on our Premier League games?
Like shopping, dating and trying to deal with public services, betting has increasingly become an online activity. Salut! Sunderland‘s Monsieur Salut naturally advises against anything other than safe, affordable flutters but has been known to dabble a little in his time – pools, first to score, match scorelines and so on – and would very much have liked to have been that punter who stuck money on Leicester for the Premier League at 5,000-to-one.
Here, someone in the know explains how it works – but would he recommend a bet on Sunderland for promotion? …
