Sunderland’s lengthening list of promotion rivals: Ipswich, plus Rotherham, Peterborough, Portsmouth and Doncaster (or Wycombe, Fleetwood, Blackpool and Coventry)

Another weekend without football, another weekend providing space to keep our readers – and pundits – up to date with our chosen clubs. If you think as far back as the start of the season you’ll probably recall six clubs being selected by our readership as the most likely to finish in the top six slots come the end of the season.

Sunderland made the cut but would have been selected regardless. The other five clubs were Ipswich Town, Rotherham, Peterborough Portsmouth and Doncaster. Ipswich apart, they haven’t done as well as expected. In fact, they haven’t done as well as Sunderland who, as the first two graphs show, haven’t done as well as they did last season

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Portsmouth then Sunderland, Ipswich, Rotherham, Peterborough and Coventry top our poll. But where are Lincoln?

On Friday we had over 3,000 visitors, followed by a quiet weekend. Not everyone took part in our top six poll  but over 1200 votes (not voters) have now been cast. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a League One fans’ site but I am expecting a few more will chip in before the season kicks off.

Early results suggest the headline I used then – for which I visited a couple of betting sites to find the promotion favourites – was on the right lines. Of the six clubs I named five are in the top spots. Lincoln (currently lingering in 8th place) are the exception with Sunderland, unsurprisingly, replacing them. There’s a gap – slight but quite evident – between the top three and the next three,  after which numbers drop off, so Lincoln and Doncaster, who made last season’s playoffs and now lie seventh, have quite a bit of ground to make up.

All of the clubs in the League received votes, which I’m taking to signify that we  managed a wide reach. It will be interesting to see if enough fans of so-called smaller clubs, which are predominantly towards the bottom of the poll, visit in large enough numbers to move their favourites upwards. Crowdwise, numbers are against them but we have only small numbers voting so you never know.

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Ipswich or Portsmouth? Rotherham or Peterborough? How about Lincoln or Coventry? It’s your choice

Last season our punters got it more or less right and correctly predicted most of the top six. Luton were missed but that was mainly down to the Coventry Ninjas, whose hijack of last year’s poll pushed them (Luton) out of the top places.

Maybe the ninjas or another club’s fans will do the same again this season. As far as I’m aware the polldaddy vulnerability that allowed multiple voting still exists and all I can do is disable the ability of readers to see the results in real time. That might change how the poll coding works (it’s built-in and can’t be changed) but it takes something away. A pity, but there we go.

I’ve got a lot on for the next few weeks so I won’t be conjuring up a novel method of tracking and displaying our chosen clubs’ progress or the lack of it. All I’ll be doing is monitoring the accretion of points for now, though I might come up with something different later in the season.

As always, your comments are welcome. We hold posts for moderation but they do go up eventually, subject to meeting commonsense rules of decency, manners, libel etc.

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From Morecambe to Blackpool, Blackburn, Bolton and Bury, then Liverpool, Everton and Tranmere. It’s an Historic Lancashire Ramble

WordPress seems happier with Win7 than Win10, and a change of computer has let me add more content and repost the report I did a few hours ago:

It was January 2017 when I last reported on this side of the Pennines, which is not surprising, given the season(s) – and close seasons – we’ve had recently. it’s a bit quieter now, so I thought it a good time to revisit before things get lively again. Some of the clubs I visited have improved their circumstances, others have seen their situations worsen and quite a few of them are now sharing a division with us, not all in the best of circumstances.

Indeed, some will make you wonder why all the fuss about us finishing fifth and missing out on promotion against Charlton, who themselves are not in the best of circumstances, given the owner is looking to sell and appears to have already given up on promotion, although he hadn’t ruled it out completely yesterday.

Charlton fans are welcome to post their thoughts but Charlton are not the issue today, the focus is firmly on the historic County of Lancashire

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Luton then Barnsley, Sunderland, Portsmouth, Charlton and Doncaster? Who knows

This will be my last visit to our “ones to watch* series before the end of the season.

You’ll have to judge for yourself whether or not our readership, ably assisted by the Coventry Ninjas**, got it right at the beginning. For my part, with three of the five – Portsmouth, Charlton and Barnsley – fighting for second place and another two still with a chance of the playoffs I’m inclined to think they didn’t do too badly.

The problem is that the sixth club is Sunderland, and that’s who they are all fighting with.

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Sixer’s Sevens: Sunderland 1-1 Blackpool. Drawing conclusions

Jake: catch Sixer’s instant seven-word verdicts throughout the season

Pete Sixsmith was there to witness the first of three successive home games that could – like it or not – define our season. The first proved a disappointment, yet another draw. And this time we had to come from behind even for that. Monsieur Salut’s headline suggests the obvious question pending our fuller analysis of the match …

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team: Blackpool at Sunderland

Pete Sixsmith

Monsieur Salut writes: in this edition of his marvellous twin series describing first encounters with Sunderland opponents and – if an away game – their grounds, Pete Sixsmith offers illuminating thoughts and memories on Tuesday night’s visitors from Blackpool. Interestingly, he remembers the same occasion in the 1970s described by our Seasiders’ Who are You? interviewee, Phil Corbett – a Roker Park clash between the two sides that ended not only unhappily for Blackpool, seeing a lead overturned and promotion hopes shattered on the last day of the season – but also violently. Those were grim times of frequent outbreaks of football hooliganism, and we had our share of idiots (and worse), as Phil relates.

Pete had a good friend, plus his dad, in the away end that day but concentrates on the football and what was a not very convincing victory – he calls it undeserved – courtesy of a late Bobby Kerr winner. At this stage of the 2018-19 season, most of us probably would settle for another while naturally hoping for better …

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Blackpool Who are You?: ‘Roker misery, Stadium of Light joy’

The Yorkshire Seasiders on a trip to Portugal. Click the photo for all the Who are You? interviews this season

Monsieur Salut writes: Phil Corbett* is one of Blackpool’s seriously disgruntled supporters, left frustrated and worn-out by the ‘calamitous’ ownership of Owen Oyston. But it doesn’t stop him being a fan. As he explains ahead of Sunderland’s home game against his side on Tuesday night, this means avoiding home games so as not to spend money on the club. Away games are considered OK provided fans can pay on the gate and not have to purchase tickets via Blackpool FC.

It is a wretched state off affairs that makes Newcastle fans’ loathing for Mike Ashley seem more like a passionate if occasionally turbulent romance. Let Phil, chairman of the wrong-side-of-the-Pennines Blackpool supporters’ group known and the Yorkshire Seasiders, take up the story, recall an unpleasant encounter with Roker Park (and the much later compensation of a winning day out at the SoL) and offer an unwelcome scoreline prediction …

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