Barnsley

Salut!’s Seasonal Summary. Part Two: from Bristol to Blackpool

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By now you should have read part one of this series, the preview of the Christmas period which I wrote for the SAFC programme. You might even remember some of the words I wrote, especially the conclusion:

“Christmas and early January remain crucial, which for us means holding our own away and completing doubles over Bradford and Shrewsbury at home. I’m not one for predicting results or tempting fate, and am all too aware there are no easy games in this league but I think we can do that, and I can see us still being in contention when the decorations come down.”

 

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Salut!’s Seasonal Summary. Part One: Bristol Rovers and the pre-Christmas outlook

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Regular readers will know that the Salut team make occasional appearances in the official matchday programme. Recent visitors will know that my last contribution came at the end of 2018, when I wrote about my take on the year before the Shrewsbury game.

However, that piece only came about after Sunderland had to fit in an extra cup game following our draw at Walsall.

I was originally asked to do something for the Bristol Rovers programme, with a focus on League One’s promotion challengers over the Christmas/New Year period. The extra game forced a change to the timetable and then other events took over, with the result that the piece I duly sent off never made it into print.

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Sixer’s Sevens: Shaky moments v Barnsley but we take the points

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Pete Sixsmith’s phone was busy from the off, with texts announcing not one, not two, but three goals for Sunderland in the first half hour.

Then came the second half, and another two texts, and with half an hour to go I was thinking, “No more texts, Pete, no more”. Fortunately, when one did come it was a good’n.

Then came the final, post whistle seven-worder that promises a must-read match report tomorrow:

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SAFC vs Barnsley Who are You? ‘What was that about, Mido?’

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Lucy Dawn: ‘I’m older than I look’

Monsieur Salut writes: what an enjoyable series Who are You? is to edit this season. I am not suggesting we should therefore remain contentedly in League One, but if you’ve been following the interviews we’ve published so far, you’ll know what I mean.

Lucy Dawn* – who makes point of not giving her age, though we are far to gentlemanly to ask in any case – comes up with another fine set of answers to our questions. The game itself, which she hopes to attend, is as important as they get at this stage of the season – we’re on a 13-game unbeaten run, they’d won six on the trot until Saturday’s home draw with Doncaster …

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team: Barnsley, nostalgia and an everyday housewife (honest)

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John McCormick writes: one of the joys of this series (and of its companion for away matches) is elegant prose, another is the pictures and videos which accompany it and then there are the asides that might be, but aren’t always, football related.

It’s just a little bit of a magic combination, not to be found on every fan site. We’re lucky to have it on ours.

Thank you, Pete Sixsmith:

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Barnsley Guess the Score: salute fighting spirit but it’s time to resume winning

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No mugs this Tuesday but there is prize … read on

Before introducing Guess the Score, Monsieur Salut has some words to add on the Max Power issue. They are not the words I originally wrote to accompany the article …

What I felt and many others felt was the rank stupidity of Max Power, a gifted player enough suspected of possessing the suicidal tendencies often if wrongly attributed to lemmings, dumped Sunderland into deep trouble with his 23rd minute red card, number three of the season, at Walsall.

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Barnsley and Doncaster (and Accrington?) push Sunderland down and Walsall out.

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My  “how’s it going?” piece went up on Friday, as per usual over the last few international breaks, and elicited few responses, as per usual over the last few seasons. I had expected one or  two Coventry ninjas (there can’t be many more than two) to pick up the series and comment but it appears to be beyond them.

Not that it matters. One appreciative reader, Edward, made a comment  and that got me thinking, so I did a bit of fiddling with the spreadsheet and here we are.

In some ways this post is similar to Friday’s. However, there is not only an update there’s also a change of emphasis. Sunderland, of course, are the main focus but, for the first time this season, Walsall and Doncaster come into the discussion, which is something they’ve merited for a while, and I’ve also included Accrington, new entrants to the play-off spots

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Barnsley lurk behind Peterborough, Portsmouth and Sunderland, while Charlton and Coventry stutter.

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With a break this weekend it’s time to revisit our “Ones to watch”.

If you’ve been following this series you’ll remember that we’re tracking six clubs over the course of the season. The six were chosen by a people’s vote, that new tool of democracy,  with the club which came top of the poll – Coventry City – also providing a baseline against which the other five will be compared.

If you’re wondering how Coventry came to be chosen click the hyperlinks at the bottom of the page. (And if you want to see how I’ve followed our selected teams in previous seasons you can follow this link ).

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Coventry are base as Peterborough join Charlton, Barnsley and Portsmouth (and SAFC) on our watch list

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There should have been an update to this series (see the archive links below for the earlier posts) at the start of the season but I travelled up early for the Charlton game, spending the Friday in Leeds before driving on to the North-East, then when I got back home I did a match report to complement Pete Sixsmith’s and didn’t have time for anything else.

This was followed by five games in two weeks, with no space to fit anything in, and here we are.

This means my last post in the series was the one that explained the role of Coventry City‘s fans in propelling their club up and Sunderland down in our poll and asked who should be the sixth team to join Coventry, Sunderland, Charlton, Barnsley and Portsmouth in our  deliberations. Peterborough was the very clear preference from the four choices offered; they got more votes than the other three clubs (Southend, Plymouth and Luton) combined.

Those six will be the ones we start with, and I can’t imagine it changing before Christmas.

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