EFL League One

Sixer’s Sevens: Oxford set the scene for the season

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Sixer keeping cool

John McCormick writes: I was surprised at that line-up and wonder how much it had to do with match fitness. Whatever the reason, the performance in the first half will have given Jack Ross some food for thought. Still, a point is better than nowt, as my granny never said. But myself, Pete Sixsmith, who was at the match whereas I wasn’t, and Jake all have the same dread thought. “is that single point a harbinger of another long grind and an unforgiving season?”
We’ll have a better idea after tomorrow, when Pete has had time to compose a more considered opinion. For now you’ll have to do with the seven word text he sent winging over flood-threatened valleys and a forlorn Bury in order to brighten your evening:

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Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Peterborough, Rotherham and Doncaster – the League One top six?

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John McCormick,  writes: our ‘who to follow’ poll remained quiet, although the trickle of votes that came in over the last week did result in some changes. Sunderland and Portsmouth are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Ipswich, Rotherham and Peterborough. Then come Doncaster, who edged ahead of Coventry, followed at a distance by Lincoln and Burton.

I did expect Blackpool to do better but our site appears to have attracted few of their fans. Their season tickets had reached 4,818, when I last checked, so there’s obviously life returning to this once-troubled club. That’s about twice the number sold by Coventry, whose own troubles are nowhere being resolved and who slipped out of our top six after Doncaster Rovers gained a few votes. A third troubled club, Bolton Wanderers, who might or might not be sold by the time this post goes live, also didn’t do too badly and finished in the top half of the table. I don’t know how they’ll do that with only 7 first team players but what do I know about football?

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Pete Sixsmith, George Honeyman, wonderstrikes, and many points to ponder

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Pete Sixsmith writes: I have been dormant since that gut wrenching, heart breaking, anger inducing last minute defeat to Charlton, a game which showed that we were not good enough over 46 league games or over 90 minutes, two observations that were as worrying as they were disappointing.

Subsequently, I paid little attention to and took little interest in what was going on in the football world, a world that for many seems only to exist at Eastlands, Old Trafford, Anfield, Stamford Bridge, Ashburton Grove and White Hart Lane. Or, if you are a Newcastle United supporter, outside of a Sports Direct shop where you can shout rude things about the owner.

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Sunderland vs Oxford, goals (secretly) galore and a fond farewell from Bryan Oviedo

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The goals we wanted finally came – and no fans were there to witness them, says Monsieur Salut. Our new striker Marc McNulty grabbed a confidence-boosting hat-trick and one apiece from Aiden McGeady and Chris Maguire gave Sunderland a 5-2 win over Hartlepool.

I could find no trace of this on the club site – the game was played in private (behind closed doors seems a daft phrase when applied to the Academy of Light) – but you’ll find a brief account at the Sunderland Echo site.

And now – while bidding farewell to Bryan Oviedo, off the payroll with a move to the Danish top-flight side FC Copenhagen (he goes with our thanks and good wishes, reciprocated above) – on to the real business. Tell us how you think SAFC will fare in Saturday’s League One opener against Oxford United.

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An invitation to Oxford United supporters ahead of the League One opener at Sunderland

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It began more than 11 years ago as Who are They? and evolved quickly into Who are You?, Salut Sunderland‘s series of interviews with fans of each of Sunderland’s opposing clubs. We’ve had the famous and the not-so-famous, creating a rich archive of often quite outstanding features. There have been few gaps and those that have occurred did so mostly because supporters who promised to answer our questions failed in the end, for whatever reasons, to deliver.

All good things come to an end, however. The business of finding willing fans, pinning them down and getting the interviews published can be complicated and is usually time-consuming. The resulting readership figures do not always justify our efforts or those of the interviewees.

We shall start this season with a rough-and-ready replacement. A shorter list of questions will be posted here before each game and the fans of each club due to face Sunderland will be invited to answer.

If the idea works, we will maintain the annual HAWAY (Highly Articulated Who Are You?) awards for the best sets of answers. If it doesn’t, it will be quietly dropped. Salut! Sunderland thanks the army of opposition fans who made the series something of which we and they can be reasonably proud.

And here are the questions for Oxford United fans. Don’t worry if your responses fail to appear as soon as sent; an anti-spam device means comments submitted by visitors who have not done so in the past are held briefly for moderation …

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Salut! Sunderland’s welcome to George Dobson – a big midfielder and what’s more, we paid for him

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George Dobson:a great photo, reproduced with the kind permission of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: at around 8pm, I switched on my phone after landing at Stansted, noticed the signing of George Dobson had been announced and prepared to write our usual welcoming piece on the train into London. Fat chance. The sun had come out and there were no trains. Nor any notice to that effect obviously visible in arrivals so passengers had to traipse all the way down to the platform only to be sent back to the terminal to queue for National Express tickets and then traipse one floor back down to locate the coach station. It was a grim ride into the capital. Probably unfair to blame Brexit but I’ll doubtless find a way. But here’s the delayed welcome …

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A frog or a prince? Salut! Sunderland welcomes Marc McNulty

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Jake’s salute to SuperKev. If only…

John McCormick writes: there’s a saying somewhere to the extent that you need to kiss a lot of frogs to get your prince. That has to be true of us. We’ve had Marco, Sir Kevin and Jermain Defoe, and also Darren Bent, but we’ve also had Tore Andre Flo, Asamoah Gyan, Steven Fletcher,  Kenwyne Jones, Marcus Stewart, Thomas Hauser, Kevin Kyle, David Bellion, Connor Whickham, Danny Dichio, Frazier Campbell, Jozy Altidore and Danny Bloody Graham (ISHS) among others.

And now we have Will Grigg and Charlie Wyke. Neither, it has to be said, has filled me with delight. Neither, it has to be said, has shone in the pre-season games. Or have I got it wrong? I wasn’t there, I have seen hardly any TV, and what do I know about football anyway? Perhaps someone more knowledgeable will correct me.

Or perhaps one of them will smack in half a dozen goals when we take on Oxford and prove me wrong that way.

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Sunderland, Bolton and Bury. Our League One financial ramble has to end somewhere.

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I didn’t know when I’d get back to this series but it seems appropriate to visit these three now, though matters aren’t completely resolved. In two of the three clubs I’m not sure when they will be, and it’s possible we’ll get to the start of the season first.

And that introduces a small problem. The origins of the series arose from my curiosity about the finances and solvency of League One clubs in the context of their having the resources and ability to mount a promotion challenge. I never intended to be digging through files in the Companies House website and thought two posts would enable me to cover 20 clubs, with a third to deal with the three where administration was possible plus Sunderland, who were facing a takeover.

It didn’t work out like that. The start went pretty much as planned but my second dip into the League revealed a level of complexity that resulted in fewer clubs being covered in slightly more depth over two posts.

And then, when I got to Blackpool, Bolton and Bury, not to mention Sunderland, not everything was in order and I did have to dig deeper than I really wanted.  I managed to cover Blackpool and got up to speed with Bolton but in Bury’s case I could still be digging. However, everything has to finish somewhere, so here’s the last post in the series:

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Portsmouth then Sunderland, Ipswich, Rotherham, Peterborough and Coventry top our poll. But where are Lincoln?

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On Friday we had over 3,000 visitors, followed by a quiet weekend. Not everyone took part in our top six poll  but over 1200 votes (not voters) have now been cast. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a League One fans’ site but I am expecting a few more will chip in before the season kicks off.

Early results suggest the headline I used then – for which I visited a couple of betting sites to find the promotion favourites – was on the right lines. Of the six clubs I named five are in the top spots. Lincoln (currently lingering in 8th place) are the exception with Sunderland, unsurprisingly, replacing them. There’s a gap – slight but quite evident – between the top three and the next three,  after which numbers drop off, so Lincoln and Doncaster, who made last season’s playoffs and now lie seventh, have quite a bit of ground to make up.

All of the clubs in the League received votes, which I’m taking to signify that we  managed a wide reach. It will be interesting to see if enough fans of so-called smaller clubs, which are predominantly towards the bottom of the poll, visit in large enough numbers to move their favourites upwards. Crowdwise, numbers are against them but we have only small numbers voting so you never know.

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