Right. That’s the pre-match build-up almost over.
There has been such a bewildering array of signings, departures, rumours and bust-ups that your guess is as good as mine on the likely starting 11 for Sunderland.
Birmingham City
Soapbox: Birmingham, Leicester memories – and here we go again
Pete Sixsmith gets his 2010-2011 Soapbox erected in time for the big kick-off and, like Colin Randall, harks back to when football was really football and men were men (or lads of not quite 16) ….
What do these numbers have in common? 46;10;2?
They are the number of seasons that Colin and me, Niall Quinn and Steve Bruce have been associated with Sunderland AFC.
Who are you? ‘No flukes’ says Birmingham City fan
We’re off. And who better to kick off the new season of Who Are You? questionnaires than Kevin Ball*? No. Their Kevin Ball, who lives amid the pixies, smugglers and clotted cream of far-off Devon, but is a Bluenose par excellence and runs the superb Joys and Sorrows fan site. Kevin also won a little Salut! Sunderland prize last season for this, the best best response to our notorious Eduardo “would you take it or be ashamed?” diving question: “I’m old fashioned, I can’t abide cheating. I don’t care if it is a Blues player or not. I would be furious.”
Salut! Sunderland The real stuff starts again. Have you forgotten the World Cup already?
Is there a World Cup happening?
Soapbox on tour: from Baden-Wurtemberg to bad and worse
It seems an awful long way to go to see the Lads comfortably beaten in a friendly, depressing everyone about the start of the real season.
The trip is over. We are back in County Durham, tired and worn out, after a 70km detour through northern France, because the bloody navigator in the car thought Ghent was to the east of Brussels and not to the west.
The Birmingham City fan topping our Pretend Fair Play league
Arsenal fans will pounce on the irony of a Birmingham fan winning something to do with fair play and inspired by Eduardo. But the issues are separate, and Kevin Ball is a deserving winner …
We’re open to accusations of cheating ourselves, that we manipulated the result to ensure yet another Mackem connection to Salut! Sunderland competition prizewinners, if only in name.
But look at the replies people gave and Kevin Ball, who runs the Birmingham fan site Joys and Sorrows fully merits his selection as winner of our Pretend Fair Play league, inspired by rival fans’ responses to the Eduardo question: would you take – gladly or guiltily – or almost wish you could decline a trophy/title/survival won by a penalty scored after a blatant dive?
How the Salut! Sunderland jury voted
Honourable mentions, too, are due to our other shortlisted candidates – read the full list by clicking here – but here are the citations from our judges for their Top Three choices in the annual Salut! Sunderland awards …
So the shortlist for the Who Are You? competition stretched to 10 entries, chosen by me from the dozens published at Salut! Sunderland – more than the number of teams we played since there were often two or more contributors – during the 2009-2010 season.
Racing for glory: Wolves, Hull and Birmingham’s dark horses
A late contender has surfaced in our Who Are you? awards. He supports Birmingham City but was not on the original shortlist. So he could be either Kevin Ball
– their Kevin Ball (left), not ours, and living in Devon – or he could be Leigh Bosworth
from the Yorkshire Bluenoses. Or, in the spirit of the age, someone could get most of the votes but still not win anything …
Who are you? We’re Aston Villa (3), lurking in Sunderland
Long ago – long even before this photo* was taken in 1995 – I had a colleague who suddenly ended his lifelong support for Villa. They’d given him quite enough grief, ruined far too many Saturdays. No more. He’d even stopped looking too hard for the scores, and felt tons happier. Somehow can’t see that happening to Gary
Gleeson**, the last in our procession of Villa fans. He lives minutes from the Stadium of Light and was until recently chairman of the Villa supporters’ club branch in the North East. Read on to see why we should hope he gets to Villa Park tomorrow night …
You’re having the sort of season we’d love: one final already, another maybe to come and still pressing for top four. I bet you’ll tell me you’re not satisfied!
I’m very very satisfied. It’s difficult to argue that a cup final, the possibility of another cup final and being in the mix for the 4th place Holy Grail is not a very successful season so far. If I have to make a prediction, I think we’ll lose to Chelsea in the FA Cup semi final and finish 6th in the league behind Spurs and Liverpool. The immediate aftermath to that will be a huge feeling of anti-climax amongst the majority of the Villa faithful. “Faithful” is probably a poor term though. I’ve noticed grumblings in recent weeks that intimate to me a feeling of entitlement amongst some Villa fans. I’m more pragmatic, although living 200 miles from Villa Park probably allows me to see a bit more of the “woods for the trees”.
Soapbox: Gordon sees off the Blues – now for Villa
SAFC 3 Birmingham 1: precisely what the doctor ordered. And what a stormer of a match, rightly praised in the dodgy stream commentary and now lauded byPete Sixsmith , who wonders if we can follow up the really hard bit – getting some points on the board – with a more relaxed, less backs-to-the-wall approach …
There’s an old adage that keepers may not win you matches, but they make sure you don’t lose ‘em. The fact that we have taken four points from the last two games is largely down to our oft maligned Scottish keeper.
Add a 20+ goals a year man in Bent and that is why we are sitting reasonably comfortably in mid table, with Stoke City and Fulham in our sights as we banish the relegation fears of January and February.
SAFC 3 Birmingham 1: is Craig Gordon the new Monty?
SEE ALSO: guess-who-was-our-star
In praise of a footballer who has had to triumph over doubt – and done so in style …
More years ago than Salut! Sunderland would willingly own up to to remembering, an away game took us to Huddersfield, where Sunderland won 3-0 in a game that began with a blitz on our goal.
The reason we weren’t left with an uphill struggle before scoring ourselves was simple: Jimmy Montgomery’s form that day was not so much outstanding as extraordinary.