Carabao Cup

Accrington Stanley vs Sunderland: giving a voice to Stanley fans

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Jake: ‘the League Cup – an opportunity or a nuisance?’

Salut! Sunderland maintains its idle hands new approach to the traditional Who are You? exercise ahead of Tuesday night’s visit to Accrington Stanley in the Carabao Cup (League Cup still sounds better).

Accordingly, rather than go out a search for a winning interviewee, a task that proved desperately hard last season, a shortened version of the questions we have previously asked appears below and we invite Stanley fans to respond to any or all of them in the Comments below.

This method worked excellently for yesterday’s league game at Ipswich, as acknowledged by our deputy editor Malcolm Dawson, but less well for the opener against Oxford United. Stanley’s small fan base makes a bumper response to this post unlikely but we’d love to be proved wrong. It’s your chance to have your say about your club; it means as much to you as ours does to us …

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Sixer’s Sheffield Wednesday Seven: out but not disgraced

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Pete Sixsmith was not to be found in the matchday (matchnight?) programme for the League Cup game against the Owls. But he was present for a 2-0 defeat in which there was plenty to admire in Sunderland’s performance. He reckoned we played some really nice football before poor Ozturk’s awful error in the first half allowed Sheff Wed to go ahead against the run of play. The result was sealed with a second Owls goal near the end. Another redeeming feature? Sixer’s first SAFC programme article should be in Sunday’s edition, for the return to League One vs Scunthorpe. This, however, is his first, succinct verdict on tonight’s exit from th EFL/Carabao/League Cup …

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Team (in the League Cup): Sheffield Wednesday

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John McCormick writes:

Pete Sixsmith wrote about Sheffield Wednesday last season, as you no doubt remember. Today he makes a brief return to that fine old club and the only time we’ve played them in the League Cup. There’s not much more for me to say, given the circumstances of that meeting, as I’m sure you’ll agree when you read Pete’s account of what is, after all, only a game:

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Sheffield Wednesday Who are You?: ‘League One might be good for you. We should know’

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Dave Briggs, Big Apple

Monsieur Salut writes: at around this time last season, Dave Briggs* gave us some great responses as a Sheffield Wednesday supporter before Sunderland’s trip to Hillsborough for a Championship game. He also got the result spot-on, saying we’d be ahead at the interval but they’d equalise and the match would end 1-1. Now the Owls are the fancied higher-league opposition – sorry, Eric, but technically the case – we went back to see how he was getting on. Dave would ‘like to think’ there’ll be a comfortable victory for his side, but accepts that team changes mean it could probably go either way. On the other hand, he fancies Sunderland’s promotion chances but is more pessimistic about the Owls’ Championship season, not least because of the impact of FFP transfer restrictions …

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SAFC vs Sheffield Wednesday prize Guess the Score: we’re the underdogs

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Jake: ‘roll up, roll up for the famous Salut! Sunderland Guess the Score competition’

It is a fact of life as we find it, says Monsieur Salut. Sunderland start the Carabao Cup tie (league cup to you and me) against the Owls on Thursday night as lower-league underdogs.

While we all hope that situation will last for only one season – unless, contrary to the expectations of many of their own fans – Sheff Wed reach the Premier League, we have to regard them as, for now, the bigger team if hardly the bigger club.

Supporters are often divided on the merits of a good league cup run. The paltry attendances in early rounds bear witness to a fair degree of apathy.

My view is a simple one: I want Sunderland to win every game they play. It doesn’t happen, but that’s how I approach each match. So I’m rooting for a good, confidence-boosting result that takes us through to the next round.

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Everton vs Sunderland prize Guess the Score: a brief return to the big time

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A little piece of history, courtesy of our Everton Who are You? interviewee Bernard Walker

Monsieur Salut introduces another prize edition of Guess rhe Score and promises belated movement on the backlog of winners …

 

As we hover just above the relegation zone despite ending the losing run, there is just one consolation: it’s a different relegation zone with names like Brentfor, Burmingham and Bolton instead of Palace, Bournemouth and – would you believe it, Jordan? – Everton.

Another heavy defeat leaves them third bottom.

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