Chelsea

Sunderland 0-0 Chelsea: hardly worth delaying the Yorkshire pud

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Pete Sixsmith: football-watching as masochism
Pete Sixsmith: football-watching as masochism

Pete Sixsmith is a hardy soul. Point him towards a match and he’ll be there whatever the time, whatever the weather. Mind, this was one to shake his resolve …


My hope was to bring you tales of derring-do from Eppleton Colliery Welfare, where the Under 21s played Chelsea at the strange time of 11.45 on Sunday.

It necessitated an overnight stay for those who represented the London club, presumably at the Radisson in Durham, although the friendly substitute warming up could only tell me that “it was near a river”. The mention of the nearby World Heritage Site of Cathedral and Castle merely elucidated a shrug of the well paid shoulders and the recognition of the word Radisson.

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Kaboul stars but slow-start Sunderland fall short in the Chelsea library

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Conflicting messages?
Conflicting messages?

ESPN FC has changed the way its Premier League bloggers reflect on each game. Now the post-match musings take the form of player ratings – marks out of 10 followed by descriptions that are a bit longer than Rob Hutchison’s one-worders at Salut! Sunderland.

Monsieur Salut‘s report from the passionless corner of west London that is Stamford Bridge appears at http://www.espnfc.us/club/sunderland/366/blog/post/2764378/younes-kaboul-solid-for-sunderland-in-loss-at-chelsea. See if you agree with the ratings …

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Sixer Says: on your way Jose Mourinho

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Jake: 'sometimes you just have to meddle in other people's business'
Jake: ‘sometimes you just have to meddle in other people’s business’
Malcolm Dawson writes……Don’t tell the kids but Pete Sixsmith is often busy at this time of year spreading joy and happiness throughout the North East, dishing out all sorts of goodies from his sack. And today Jose Mourinho also got the sack although I can’t remember the last time I saw him spread any joy and happiness around. They say it was by mutual consent and at this time of peace and goodwill maybe that’s a way of sorting out the financial settlement owing to him. Pete has his own views on events at the Bridge and he’s not frightened to share them.

GOODBYE JOSE

The second item on the Six O’Clock News tonight featured a middle aged man based in London falling out with a motley group of Europeans and ending up walking away. But enough of David Cameron and his travails with the massed ranks of the EU political leaders; the first item was the end of The Special One.

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As Sunderland face Chelsea, meet our Weardale connection and name SAFC’s top scorer

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Let us introduce you to our Guess the Score sponsors
http://www.personalisedfootballgifts.co.uk/sunderland/sunderland-gifts

The buildup to Chelsea v SAFC has begun with Guess the Score. Soon there’ll be another of our ‘Who are You?’ interviews. For now, though, some ideas for late Christmas shopping with a Sunderland flavour …


In an ideal world, Salut! Sunderland would have is own busy sales department, teams of people beavering away to dispatch SAFC-related merchandise to all corners of the world and keep Sixer, Jake and the rest of us in a style to which we are not accustomed.

But that ideal is beyond us. Our modest forays into the field were amateurish, far too time-consuming to justify the effort and, in the end, spectacularly unsuccessful.

Along the way, however, we have managed to attract those who are good at this kind of thing to sponsor our competitions and, in a few cases, advertise with us. So it is time for Salut! Sunderland to return the favour.

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Chelsea v SAFC Guess the Score: will Leicester result help or hinder?

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Jake: 'anything Bournemouth & Leicester do, we can better' Can't we?
Jake: ‘anything Bournemouth & Leicester do, we can do better’ Can’t we?


Knowing Sunderland supporters as we do, the easiest guesswork in this week’s competition would be to predict the answer to the question in the headline.

Decades of disappointment have made most of us professional gloom merchants. So Chelsea’s latest defeat, 2-1 at refreshingly table-topping Leicester, damages our prospects for Saturday at the Bridge rather than improves them.

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Diving for glory. Is blaming foreigners jingoistic piffle, or sadly spot-on?

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Tom Webb
Tom Webb

Salut! Sunderland has been banging on for years about diving, the feigning of injury, unprofessional attempts by players to get opponents booked or sent off and other forms of cheating. The issue is raised with every “Who are You?” interviewee and I can think of only one or two who said too much fuss was made of it.

But should we really accept that British players are largely blameless, or that they were until they caught the nasty habits of Johnny Foreigner?

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Taylor Made: a BBC football version of This is Your Life

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Bill Taylor gets lost in stats
Bill Taylor gets lost in stats

Bill Taylor came across a nifty new BBC tool allowing fans of all Premier League teams to calculate their clubs’ performance during their lifetimes. Fellow Sunderland supporters – and others – are invited to have a go and report back any interesting findings …

There’s no evidence to support this, but George Santayana, the Spanish/American writer and philosopher, COULD have been at Wembley in 1937 to see Sunderland clobber Preston North End 3-1 in the FA Cup. Santayana was certainly in Europe at the time.

And the saying he’s most famous for could well be applied to the Black Cats and their long-suffering fans: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

For those of us who have trouble remembering what happened last week, let alone a few decades ago, the BBC’s football website has unveiled a magical new tool to jog our memories.

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