Wrinkly Pete has given up on his 3-3 predictions and 4-3 didn’t quite happen. Some guessed a Bristol City romp but no one had us down for a 3-3 draw, so no Guess the Score winner last Saturday.
We now turn our attentions to Brentford at home. And wouldn’t it be nice to award a prize to someone predicting a Sunderland win?
Lars Knutsen knows how to choose them. Back from his USA exile (correcting the earlier reference, he still travels there a lot but family needs prompted him to relocate), he made it to the Bristol City game. Pete Sixsmith has already woven his familiar magic; here is an outstanding account from Lars of his own extraordinary afternoon …
Olivia Hutchison was there and her shortest of video clips, capturing the exhilaration of the away end after a composite known as OG scored his second, our third, has been repeated over and again at Twitter.
@livvhutchison SCENES from away end at the equaliser. @RokerReport @salutsunderland pic.twitter.com/slM7zLJzzc
— Rob Hutchison (@RobHSafc) February 10, 2018
Usually, if he’s there, Rob Hutchison dictates one-word player-by-player verdicts and his daughter Olivia passes them on to us. Today, he was absent. She was there – and how she enjoyed the last few minutes of a game we once seems destined to lose by a cricket score. ‘The worst 45 minutes of football followed by the best 45 minutes of football – That’s Sunderland for you,’ she says while hardly preparing top-of-the-form marks for the players …
Monsieur Salut writes: I think we’d rather like to keep the Stadium of Light. Answers on a postcard, please, re the unexpected interest in Billy Jones. We met Phil Clarke before the home game, another of those best forgotten afternoons at the Stadium of Light. Phil naturally had a great day out, checking his family’s solid Wearside roots – he is the nephew of our own Pete Lynn (Wrinkly Pete). No other Bristol City fan responded to our feelers for the return game, so Phil updates us with thoughts on the Robins’ excellent cup run and what continues to be a good, promotion-chasing season in the league … but does he realise just how much our Billy might cost his club? …
Ken Gambles makes a welcome return to writing action with some thoughts he wish he didn’t feel the need to express …
Monsieur Salut writes: this is really the new instalment of Guess the Score. Enter below the scoreline you expect, hope or fear at Ashton Gate on Saturday. If you are first with the correct result, you will win a prize though you must have a UK delivery address to receive it. Ha’way the Lads and all that but forgive me if there seems very little else worth saying about a game most of us probably have uneasy feelings about while hoping for the best …
Yes, I got angry at the weekend and directed some of my anger at our absent, reluctant owner. Yes, he has plenty to answer for.
One crass comment in his tame, underarm bowling sort of interview with the official club site in November particularly annoyed me. He complained that anything that appeared in the media about him was based on speculation or invention because “I don’t talk to the press”.
Monsieur Salut writes: I asked Pete Sixsmith to cast a critical eye over the ins and outs now that the transfer window has slammed shut – shattered? – on us. I did not expect to find him absent from duty running in sheer joy up and down Busty Bank (which takes the envious souls of South Church up to Shildon). I didn’t fear we’d need to drag him from celebration drinks at whatever they call the Surtees or Red Lion these days, shouting all the while in praise of our saviours Ellis Short and Martin Bain. I sort of expected the cool, measured, underwhelmed appraisal that follows …
Monsieur Salut writes: on Twitter, where we found him, he goes by the name of ITFC COYB. Darren Elmy* is a Glasgow-based Ipswich Town fan who would normally have been at Saturday’s game as he loves visiting Sunderland and has Mackem family connections. Unfortunately he cannot make it but we do have his thoughts on both clubs and the match.
Darren’s a professional gambler; we hope he loses any stake he places on his predicted scoreline – 1-1 – but hammers the bookies if he hedges his bets with money on an emphatic home win …
This edition of Guess the Score will involve a level of effort equivalent to that shown by Sunderland AFC at Birmingham the other night.
There will accordingly be nothing until we reach about the two-thirds stage of the article. Instead, readers are invited to imagine an expanse of blank space between the last word of this sentence and the first word of the next since it’s beyond Monsieur Salut’s technological skills to achieve the look for himself.