Salut!’s week: Newcastle Matty gets his say, Bruce’s rocket

Another review of the week has Salut! Sunderland looking back over the past few days – and, for ruby-tinted reasons, a little bit forward, too …

This, my friends, is how the young and trendy of the North East dressed and did their hair back in 1971. Or not, as the case may be.

Trendy or not, it is how the Anglo-French couple who were soon to become Mr and Madame Randall looked when the Stanley News and Northern Echo sent a photographer (just one: both papers belonged to the same company) to get some pictures. I think they were taken in Lanchester.

The wedding was on November 16 1971, in the city of Le Mans where Stéphane Sessegnon played for a couple of years, which means that the ruby anniversary is looming. So we’re off to Bali to mark the occasion; it is for you to guess whether this is being done on the proceeds of the millions of Salut! mugs sold.

What this means is that for the next fortnight, until just before the Wigan game, M Salut will have little or no access to the site. These things are beyond Pete Sixsmith so Joan Dawson will handle what needs to be done as best she can and I have excellent “Who are You?” interviews (actually, one of them is an article in its own right, and a very special one) already in the bag and ready for use before the forthcoming two games.

Now, we should look back over the past week.

Starting with the most recent, the aforementioned Sixer had some fun – click here to see it – with the fuss being made about the St James’ Park name change. It brought in large numbers of Newcastle supporters, whose mischievous reminders of our respective positions in the Premier wiped the odd smile from face.

Only one of the Mags wishing to post comments, someone going by the name of Matty, tried the foul-mouthed approach before realising this really isn’t that kind of site. He made two further attempts and both were free of abuse; they were also very similar, suggesting he desperately wants us to hear his view so here it is:

Mags 15pts up on the mackems u thought this would of been a bigger talking point ???

The week had begun with lots of Sunderland supporters reflecting on the defeat at Manchester United. Ian Porter’s Defeat not the whitewash I feared was a very fair appraisal and this was followed by Sixer’s own analysis in which he also mocked the dynamics of penalty calls at Old Trafford.

This all prompted Ken Gambles to cast his mind back to some of the refereeing howlers – the reversal of the penalty decision last week was, of course, 100 per cent correct – that have tormented us in the past. Read it here and you’ll probably think, as I did, of those he missed out.

M Salut found a Ghanaian website’s interview with Asamoah Gyan which got very close to an admission that he moved for the money. No great surprise there, but to have it – nearly – in the horse’s mouth was a departure from the usual nonsense about these things always being done for footballing reasons. Click here for the full article.

To Birflatt Boy, it had clearly seemed an age since anyone had demanded Steve Bruce’s head on the executioner’s block. A silence he shattered into a thousand pieces with a strident rebuttal of the Postivos’ case. It drew the usual heavy postbag, as you can see by clicking here.

Pete Sixsmith took an affectionate look at the lives of Jimmy Adamson and Florian Albert, recently departed.

There was more, notably Sixer’s Sevens and Bruce’s Banter.

But now it’s time to go. Please let us be three points better off by the time I get back.

Click here: £9.50, post-free for UK buyers, from the Salut! Sunderland Shop

Colin Randall