Picture: Chelsea. Brings to mind that fabulous Quinn/SuperKev destruction of them in 1999. Sky-high prices for away tickets. Not the cuddliest team or fans in the Premier. But we do know some lovely people who support the Blues and they were utterly deserving of the title last season. AND we ended up top of a very special Chelsea mini-league: ahead, on goal difference, of Villa, Wigan and Stoke among teams they scored seven or eight against. After Man Utd, Chelsea – in the form of Denise, from thechelseablog.org – came calling for the Salut! Sunderland take on life …
Chelsea
Nice tale about ‘ooh aah’ Eric Roy
00-01 Eric Roy Match Worn Shirt
Image: Sunderland shirts
Despite the tone of recent pieces, there IS still something good to say about French football. Needless to say, there’s a strong Sunderland connection here …
Salut! Sunderland has hit upon an obvious choice of team to support in the French top-flight Ligue 1 that kicks off a week on Saturday. It did no harm to Paraguay in the World Cup, backed by this site in honour of their Sunderland players (Paulo da Sila and Cristian Riveros) and red and white stripes. And now we hope our cheerful allegiance to the Olympique Gymnaste club de Nice will bring even more sunshine to the Mediterranean coast than it already enjoys.
Think back to a cold Saturday afternoon in Sunderland. Dec 4 1999. Not a bit like the Cote d’Azur.
Crime, punishment and les Bleus: Malouda does community service
OK, not everyone is as fascinated as
Colin Randall by the continuing French football crisis. But with time to spare before the World Cup semis, it seems appropriate to dot the odd i and cross a t or two following the condemnation by Liliam Thuram of Patrice Evra …
So Thierry Henry had his meeting with Sarko, and one of the dinosaurs of the French Football Federation, its 75-year-old president Jean-Pierre Escalettes, has fallen on his sword.
Meanwhile Liliam Thuram adopts the role of stern, onlooking head of (a more glorious) history, and Florent Malouda puts in some post-mutiny community service in Haiti.
Chelsea 1 Portsmouth 0: paying the penalty
Sorry, Lads. I really wanted to record a stunning victory, reminiscent of 1973, for the underdogs. There was, in the event, to be no FA Cup Final fairytale. Chelsea 1 (won) Portsmouth 0 (didn’t, despite having a great but squandered chance to go ahead with a first-half penalty).
So the score was the same as Sunderland v Leeds 37 years ago, but in the wrong order, Drogba’s goal winning it for Chelsea.
Chelsea advice to Portsmouth: be plucky losers
Salut! Sunderland had no doubt Chelsea deserved the Premier title more than Manchester United, and said so in the posting found here. For tomorrow’s FA Cup Final, poor Portsmouth get our sympathy vote, and we’d love to see them win. Having invited Peter Allen to share his Pompey dreams and nightmares yesterday, we were duty bound to hear from a Chelsea fan, too. Step forward
David Millward *, an occasional visitor to these shores, who passionately wants the richer shade of blue to prevail. But he does have kind words for Pompey and Avram Grant – and bemoans the Stamford Bridge moaners …
Once upon a time a Chelsea v Pompey clash was less to do with football than making a fashion statement.
Some time after the skinhead years, the two clubs rivalled each other in the designer wear which their crews wore. If it wasn’t Tacchini, it was Lacoste. If it wasn’t Lacoste, it was Slazenger.
READ ON: but also see our Pompey fan’s wistful thoughts on tomorrow by clicking here
Portsmouth v Chelsea: making merry as the ship goes down …
Colin Randall writes: just before Sunderland went to Portsmouth for what should have been a routine romp into the FA Cup fifth round, a Paris-based, Pompey-daft friend
Peter Allen – no stranger to Salut! Sunderland – said he had a hunch it might be another Wembley year for his crisis-hit club. Of course, Pete, of course, we thought, keeping an eye open for airborne pigs. Time to eat humble pork pie, and present the first of our fan previews of the final …
Portsmouth fans have a lot in common with the fabled band of the RMS Titanic at the moment.
The icy waters of bankruptcy are lapping in, most of the lifeboats have long since disappeared, and we’re left manning the trumpets and drums for what is potentially our last hurrah.
READ On – and come back tomorrow for a Chelsea fan’s turn
Chelsea, Portsmouth and the FA Cup’s blue magic
Top versus bottom. The super-rich and the paupers. Worlds apart, the Two Blues of this weekend’s FA Cup Final, Chelsea and Portsmouth, will surely produce a game that remains true to form and shows that the faded old competition isn’t really a great leveller after all.
Colin Randall gets Salut! Sunderland’s Wembley build-up underway but return on Thursday and Friday for the fans’ views …
The Two Blues, if you grew up in the County Durham of which Sunderland was part, were Bishop Auckland.
They were the kings of amateur football and there was a time, when they had the ultimate showman goalkeeper in Harry Sharratt and such stalwarts as Bob Hardisty and Derek Lewin, that it seemed they were hardly ever away from Wembley.
Sunderland v Manchester United: the view from Old Trafford (1)
No Sunderland player will need lifting for this one. We have played well against all the top clubs at home this season – and we came within an ace of winning at Old Trafford. Free from relegation stress, playing for pride and a top 10 finish, we can confound the received wisdom that this is an away banker.
Salut! Sunderland came across Justin Mottershead, United fan and football blogger*, when he named Kieran Richardson, just entering his best form of the season, in his worst Premier League XI. Who better, then, to star in our last-but-one Who Are You? feature of the season? Justin sees Kieran scoring the winner (sadly an own goal) but accepts that even this wouldn’t be enough to take the title back to Old Trafford …
Salut! Sunderland: So let’s get this out of the way: who will end up as the top four, in order, and – somewhat easier now than when the question was posed – bottom three?
Chelsea, United, Arsenal and Spurs. Pompey, Burnley and Hull.
Chelsea will win then title because Liverpool reserves will lie down and die, like Benitez and everyone else associated with the club wants them to. Spurs will get fourth just so Kia Joorbachian can sell Tevez to someone else in Europe and wipe the smile off the bitter blues faces.
Soapbox: a walkover for Manchester’s Reds? Don’t think so
Yes, we are underdogs for Sunday. No, we do not deserve to be treated as if incidental to the natural order. On paper, it’s an away win but on a big day for reputations to be reinforced, an outstanding Sunderland display could bring a result.Pete Sixmsith reports …
So we approach the penultimate weekend of the Premier League season. There are two games left until the curtain closes on an interesting, if non vintage season.
Last year it was all about who goes down (Newcastle – hee, hee) while this year, according to the media the entire Premier League season will be decided at Anfield, where Chelsea need to win to go into the last weekend and a home game against Wigan to take their third PL Championship.
However, if Chelsea lose at Anfield, the title will go to United as they will obviously win their final two games against Premier League makeweights like Sunderland and Stoke City – that’s if the entire Stoke side haven’t had a mass fight in a field in the Potteries, watched over by bullet headed men with straining at the leash Staffys.
Manchester United: lame ducks and quack remedies
We begin our build-up to Sunderland’s final home game of a season that started well, promised much, floundered a lot and finally regathered momentum to guarantee our highest Premier League finish since 2001. Salut! Sunderland offers its own welcome to Manchester United …
Chelsea may have all but killed the title race dead by the time Sir Alex Ferguson’s team takes the field to do battle with Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. A win at Anfield earlier the same afternoon will leave the Blues needing only to beat Wigan at home the following Sunday, assuming United beat us, to ensure top place. A team that has rammed seven goals past three other Premier sides should surely regard that as a simple task against the only one to concede nine in a game.
Everyone, of course, expects United to beat us. It’s a given. For everyone, that is, except two groups of supporters, one determined (Sunderland) and the other merely hopeful (Chelsea).