Salut! Week: from Dylan and Middlesbrough to hope eternal

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Another Saturday morning review of the week as seen by Salut! Sunderland

Martin O’Neill’s dramatic last-gasp win in his first game as manager set us up for a great week for banter and upbeat thought.

Whatever happens at Spurs tomorrow afternoon – and no pundit is likely to give us a hope – we have seen reason to believe better times may lie ahead.

We decided to call the new boss’s post-match comments Martin’s Musings and it is right to invite readers who may have missed the first proper instalment, after the defeat of Blackburn Rovers, to catch them by clicking here; MON felt we had made our own luck.

Pete Sixsmith was pleased to see Blackburn reduced to Wild Rovers as the points were snatched from them, M Salut enthused about James McClean and Luke Harvey made a welcome return to these pages with a detailed analysis of the game and of the transition from Bruce to O’Neill. And Eric Sweeney described feelings of hope that in MON, we at last have a world-class manager capable of bringing us a bright new era (and heaven help us if not).

But the best thing, by a mile, to appear at Salut! Sunderland all week came from a long-established SAFC supporter but relative newcomer to this site.

Hilary Fawcett spoke of her twin obsessions, Bob Dylan and Sunderland, and described how the latter passion developed after a childhood escape from Ayresome Park.

If you read nothing else of Salut! Sunderland‘s output in the week gone by, whether for the first time or to savour it for a second, I urge you to take a look at the opening episode of The Fawcett Saga: Canny for a lass – football, Dylan and me.

There was still time for a Spurs “Who are You?”. Jamie Currie, from the Spurs blog White Hart Pain and a regular on Ian Wrght’s radio show, got up some noses for perceived London arrogance. I thought he achieved his aim of dealing light-heartedly with the questions, though there was the odd trace of supreme self-confidence.

More? We praised Seb Larsson while having a little fun with news of Nicklas Bendtner’s run-in with the Copenhagen pizzeria where his attempts to obtain late-night nosh without actually having the means to pay went down quite badly.

And we heroically resisted the temptation to urge Bendtner and Lee Cattermole to have jurisdiction in their spot of bother with police in Newcastle, where they are suspected of having damaging parked cars, transferred to Singapore, where penalties for such behaviour – if proved – can be painful. But then, there’s no need; they’ll already be smarting from Birflatt Boy’s stinging rebuke, with its priceless headline ((his): Pizza for nothing and your chicks for free.

Monsieur Salut
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