Burnley

Sixer’s Sevens: Grigg’s off the mark and Burnley are turfed out of the cup

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Pete Sixsmith gets to a lot of Sunderland games home and away – though he’s introduced a ban on matches south of Lincoln this season – and whizzed across the Pennines to show solidarity with Bury and Bolton and watch the Lads at Turf Moor. Only the Carabao Cup. But up against Premier League opposition again.

In his instant seven-word verdict – a full account of the game will follow – Pete didn’t say that we have three more scorers this season, or that Will Grigg got the first. Instead, he just happened to express a little bit of pleasure at yet another win across the Pennines, then an even more pleasing summary of a game that went our way and set up another test against Premier League opposition, away to Sheffield Utd in the next round:

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Burnley vs Sunderland: how important to them is winning on Wednesday?

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Burnley fans who recall straying here in the past may also remember we would preview each game between our clubs with comprehensive question-and-answer interviews with one of their fellow supporters.

That has changed, not because we are now two divisions lower than the last time we met but because we have introduced a simplified version of Who are You? this season.

Instead off hunting down Alastair Campbell, as we did once at this link, or another Burnley fan and firing off questions at him (or her), we now – as with all other games – post a shorter list of questions here and invite responses in the Comments below.

Answer as many or as few as you wish. Sometimes the new way (and indeed WAY) works, mostly – it’s early in the season but on the evidence so far – it doesn’t but we’d welcome responses from as many Burnley fans as possible …

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Burnley vs Sunderland: a useful test against Premier League opposition

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Sunderland’s record against Burnley was at best patchy even when we were also in the Premier League. Now two divisions separate us and we travel to Turf Moor for a Carabao Cup tie.

There are different ways of looking at the game. Chris Maguire’s fine hat-trick in the 3-1 win against AFC Wimbledon will have done team confidence a power of good as did the notching up of four wins in a row. A fifth would be welcome, especially in this test against a much smaller club that has a rather bigger team just now.

But losing – narrowly by preference if it has to happen – would not be the end of the world in a season where promotion is the priority over all other matters.

Tell us how it will go.

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Test Matches and Sunderland playoffs. Part one: Gillingham and Newcastle United

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Jake prepares for the play offs

John McCormick writes: I had a taxi booked for this morning. It arrived late. Apparently, there were fewer on the road than usual and those that were there were being driven by Evertonians. It would have been a fine night in the city centre.

All this season and last, Pete Sixsmith has brought us his twin series of reminiscences recalling the first time he visited the homes of upcoming opponents or the first time he saw them on be that on Wearside at Roker Park or the Stadium of Light, or occasionally at places like Darlington or Hartlepool.

Before he started on this epistle from the past he had this to say on last night’s game at Anfield.

My seven-word verdict on last night’s Champions League turnaround would have been: Bottled it and beaten by Farringdon’s finest.

I rarely watch games on television – and never when Robbie Savage is “summarising”- but I did watch this one and revelled in a wonderful team performance by Liverpool. At the head of it was our former player, Jordan Henderson, who never stopped running and tackling, who set up the opening goal for Origi and who was a fine captain deserving of all the success that is coming his way. I’m not a great lover of the club or some of its self-satisfied fans, but I do like Jurgen Klopp.

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Ten Years After: when Carlos Edwards and Keano warmed Sunderland hearts

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Monsieur Salut writes: it seems an awful long time ago. Then, BBC Radio Newcastle’s brilliantly excitable Simon Crabtree had produced the Mother of all Goal Commentaries with his description of Carlos Edwards’s scintillating winner against Burnley to push us closer to promotion (achieved as champions with the 5-0 away win at Luton in the final game). It’s in the superb YouTube clip you see above.

But Ten Years After – OK, a little more than 10, since the Burnley  match was on April 27 and the Luton game on May 6 – we all need to have our spirits lifted. Then, we were in the hands of the Drumaville consortium, a group of Irish businessmen led by Niall Quinn as chairman and Seaham-born John Hays as vice chairman. I have seen the message Niall sent Drumaville’s surviving veterans after our relegation was confirmed this season; it was a model of dignity and pride.

Can the memory of that astonishing bottom-to-top transformation inspire whoever, ultimately, accepts the job of managing Sunderland and whoever is subsequently the club’s owner(s). We shall see. But here is how we reported on promotion 10 years ago …

 

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West Brom, Watford safe. Palace, Bournemouth, Burnley relaxing, ‘Boro, Hull, Swansea sweating. Sunderland propping them up.

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John McCormick: We're not bottom, so is it a Happy Christmas?
John McCormick

Another empty weekend unless you’re a groundhopper like Sixer or a local league fan like Malcolm, which means it’s time for a relegation review. With six games to go in a compressed framework and a holiday coming up this is probably the last one I’ll be able to fit in.

It has been a long and tedious season (as have been the last four apart from that trip to Wembley,  only three years ago although  it seems like a lifetime, those six wins in a row, a sequence of wins against Citeh and wins at places like Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge *[see below]) and while some of our chosen teams have reached safety we haven’t and are still awaiting a conclusion.

And according to my calculations, as if you needed them, that conclusion isn’t good for us.

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Sixer’s Burnley Soapbox: no plan, no guile but at least a Chuck Berry payoff

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Jake’s verdict was ‘not enough’ and David Moyes felt unable to disagree

Monsieur Salut writes: normally, our deputy editor Malcolm Dawson introduces Pete Sixsmith‘s unfailingly compelling reflections on Sunderland matches. I have become quite proficient at following each match by internet streams and Barnes and Benno but Malcolm and Sixer both attend most home games and the lame 0-0 draw to Burnley was no exception (the interviewee for our first-class Burnley ‘Who are You?’ Duncan Sutcliffe joined them in County Durham yesterday to complete his journey from Lancashire to the Stadium of Light).

Sixer suggested that for once I should post his piece because, talking over the disappointment of the game by phone this morning, we both found bleak humour in my oversight, when sending my usual report to  ESPN, in inadvertently omitting Jack Rodwell entirely from my ratings. It was therefore, until quickly rectified, as if we had started with 10 men. Mmmm. Over to Sixer to ponder this Freudian slip and other striking features of a match that may prove decisive in our latest bid to survive in the top flight, and see if you can improve on his closing reference to the newly departed and truly great Chuck Berry …

 

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Sixer’s Sevens: Sunderland 0-0 Burnley. Unimaginative and wasteful

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Jake: ‘Benno got it right – just not enough’

Monsieur Salut writes: another wasted chance to keep in touch with anything remotely resembling safety. First half was abysmal, Burnley poor but often threatening whereas Sunderland were just poor. Very poor. Second half? Four or five excellent chances to score so it was undoubtedly better, but still so far short of being good enough. On his birthday, Pete Sixsmith had to field questions on social media about what could possibly spoil his day. His seven-word verdict, later modified a little and on which he will gloomily expand, tells it all …

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