Chelsea

Recalling Sunderland’s most memorable games in history

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[polldaddy poll=9939797]

A just-for-fun poll introduces this look at some of the greatest games in Sunderland AFC’s history. Many readers will approve of the choices made by Ben Jones, a sportswriter and ‘massive Sunderland fan’. Others might add the 4-1 defeat of Chelsea in the first of our seventh-top Premier seasons under Peter Reid. Or the first FA Cup 6th Round replay against Manchester United at Roker Park in 1964. Back in 2013, a Roker Report piece on great games over the festive period threw others into the mix: the last-second win against Man City on New Year’s Day, 2012; a 4-1 Boxing Day romp at Bradford in 2000 and two Old Trafford classics (a 5-3 win on Boxing Day 1950 and a 2-1 defeat on New Year’s Day 2003. You decide …

Since Sunderland became the first new team to join the Football League in 1890 and from the earliest seasons, their name has been embroidered prominently in the tapestry of English football history.

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A warm welcome to Jake Clarke-Salter. A slightly sour farewell to Lewis Grabban

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Jake Clarke-Salter. Welcome and good luck. Image: by @cfcunofficial (Chelsea Debs) London (Aston Villa 0 Chelsea 4) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

We have been this way before. Early activity in a transfer window seems positive and our hopes rise accordingly, only to be dashed by a combination of factors: the questionable SAFC managerial merry-go-round, an imbalance of expectation and delivery and the air of thick gloom hanging over the club.

But Chris Coleman’s first move really does look like a sound one. Jake Clarke-Salter, a ball-playing central defender brought on loan from Chelsea, “is supposed to be rather good”, says a Chelsea-supporting friend.

Lewis Grabban and SAFC: hardly a passionate love affair

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Sunderland’s 10 relegations: down with a Wembley twist

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Pete Sixsmith

Pete’s going to be busy for a while, so there’s a good chance we’ll have a new manager – maybe a new owner (not to mention the possibility of a new prime minister) – before he gets back to this series. In the meantime, here’s his take on relegation number 4.

Like the first three, and like his other musings, it’s excellent stuff

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Salut! Sunderland’s HAWAYs: Watford finish top ahead of Chelsea and Bournemouth

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The deed is done. Another series of Who are You? interviews with opposing supporters has produced winners. Read on to see who the judges chose, and why ….

 

The judges have spoken. This year’s winners of the HAWAYs – awards for the Highly Articulate Who are You? interviews conducted through each season with fans of Sunderland’s opposing clubs – are announced today.

And in clear top place is Watford-supporting Del Day, followed by Chelsea’s Ray Knight and Bournemouth’s Tom Latchem.

Salut! Sunderland is, as ever, enormously grateful to the prize sponsors – Classic Football Shirts, When Saturday Comeshttps://shop.wsc.co.uk and Art of Football, and the gallery shows appropriate products each offers – and will simply offer Del his choice of the three. Ray gets second choice, leaving Tom with the remaining prize.

If the mood holds until the end of this article, there will be a special award from Salut! Sunderland funds for another deserving contender. But the truth is, as Jake’s caption makes clear, that the strength of the Who are You? series – see the full season’s entries here – is the quality of the responses we receive from the supporters who agree to participate.

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HAWAY awards: Bournemouth, Chelsea, Shrewsbury and Watford fight for Salut! SAFC honours

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Jake: ‘with thanks to all opposing fans who participate’


See how we introduced this year’s awards at https://safc.blog/2017/05/haway-its-awards-time-again-with-bournemouth-middlesbrough-swansea-making-early-running/

The suspense mounts.

Early next week, Salut! Sunderland will announce the winners of the HAWAYS, our annual Who are You? awards for the best interviews with opposing supporters.

The prizes shall be:

* a year’s subscription to the ever-brilliant magazine When Saturday Comes

* a voucher for £50 to spend with Classic Football Shirts

* a print from Art of Football. You’ll recall their highly individual depictions of Jermain Defoe’s winning volley against Newcastle United, Kevin Phillips and the heroes of 1973. A winner choosing this prize would naturally look more widely around Art of football’s range

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Hutch’s Patch post-Chelsea: ‘culpable, fragile, tragic’ – match the words and players

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Jake: ‘2016/17 season, bog off and don’t come back’
Rob Hutchison – inexplicably renamed Ron when this first appeared – gets to lots of games, almost all of them away since he’s exiled in the south. He and his daughter, Olivia, enjoy the day out, like meeting up with old and new friends and then – for the most part – endure the football. Here are Rob’s final one-word ratings of the season after watching the champions tear us apart at Stamford Bridge. ‘And so it’s done,’ says our man of few words. ‘Thank God for that.’ Monsieur Salut’s ratings at ESPN FC appear in parentheses and are not so different …

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Chelsea Who are You?: (2) advertising on men’s shirts, shortness of Sunderland skirts

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Sid and Robin at the Vikings Stadium in Minneapolis ahead of a Chelsea friendly against AC Milan

One of the many joys of the various seasons’ editions of ‘Who are You?’ has been the way it has unearthed sparkling anecdotes, unexpected encounters between supporters, or supporters and players and/or officials and fascinating details of people’s lives. David Millward* has been here before, telling us about his allegiance to Chelsea but, much more interesting, recounting the story or why everyone calls him Sid. An uncle was the British bandleader Sid Millward (of Nitwits fame, no less) and the tale is told here .. Sid is now in the USA from where he sends this welcome set of answers to our questions, thus ending the 2016-2017 series. We learn, for example, that he was dumb-struck by the shortness of girls’ skirts on a cold Wearside night and also how much he loathes the sight of sponsorship advertising on players’ tops …

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