It hardly seems appropriate after yesterday but Salut! Sunderland wishes all readers, including those who contribute to its pages, a very happy new year …
Monsieur Salut writes: surely no football team sets out to play as woefully as ours did at Burnley yesterday. It just happens. Sadly, of course, it seems to happen to Sunderland more than to most.
Supporting Sunderland has never been easy and few of us will stop doing so because of the meek and clueless surrender at Turf Moor. But where do we go from here (yes, I realise the answer is fairly obvious, but I mean if we are to give ourselves any hope of redemption)? Peter Sixsmith, who suffered with the rest of the travelling contingent in Lancashire, was asked by The Observer to set out our transfer prospects. This was his response, naturally submitted before yesterday’s calamitous events …
A big month for David Moyes coming up. We’re told there’s a limited budget but we need at least two more defenders. Carl Jenkinson has been mentioned, but we’ll need another centre-back too as Koné will be missing one way or the other – either sold, or off on Africa Cup of Nations duties. Elsewhere we have to do whatever it takes to hang on to Jermain Defoe – we could do without Sam Allardyce and Slaven Bilic distracting him. Other than that, I guess we’ll be checking to see if there are any out-of-contract former Everton players knocking around – and it wouldn’t come as a big surprise if Peter Crouch pitched up. But not Dimitar Berbatov – far too pricey for a low wage economy like ours.