From our friends across the water, we have heard of good public relations and bad public relations during Sunderland’s North American tour.
Paul Pattison, a long-time exile originally from County Durham (Annfield Plain), told the story of the owner Ellis Short’s wife, Eve, mingling and posing with SAFC fans before the first game in Sacramento. Eve Short went to university in the area and used the occasion to meet up with old friends.
So who do we think is fit to lead a team bearing the handsome red and white stripes on which someone clearly based his or her design when coming up with a colour scheme – spotted the other day – for the central bagni in the Italian resort of Santa Margherita, right next to Portofino?
Rob Hutchison’s about to indulge in a flight. But before he does he has time for a little flight of …
Malcolm Dawson writes……..Peter Sixsmith is a frequent visitor to the National Stadium at Wembley. Usually it’s to watch a Rugby …
Jeremy Robson sees a ray of hope in what to date has been a lousy season. But to keep the …
It’s fair to say that recent results have brought about increased hope in the minds of Sunderland supporters the world …
The atmosphere around the Stadium of Light last night was not that of a club in crisis writes Malcolm Dawson. …
What follows started life as a passionate, sorrowful missive that one of the 2,650 poor souls who sat in the away section at the Hawthorns on Saturday intended to post to the SAFC owner, Ellis Short. Whether he couldn’t find a stamp or was just overtaken by the pace of events hardly matters. The thoughts, suitably tweaked to take account of those events, remain valid and apply to the immediate future as much as they did to the closing stages of the short PDC era. The author is a southern-based exile, known to Monsieur Salut, who prefers to remain anonymous …
What hoops we go through to support Sunderland AFC. Few of us can do anything about that. We are not, generally speaking, the kind of fans who can tire of one club and just move on to another. We’re stuck for life.
Last week, I decided to set aside a few minutes this morning to renew my membership of the SAFC Supporters’ Association London and SE branch. Not for a second did I think of not doing so after all because we’re at rock bottom. My allegiance has never been subject to appointments and sackings of and by people whose ties to the club are a lot more fleeting than mine.
What cannot be denied is that we are in seriously troubled waters. It does not matter that the Premier League season has 33 games left in it. Whoever now comes in has a monumental task to put things right given the miserable start and the wretched luck we had with the fixtures list.
Some will be – indeed are – much less understanding of Ellis Short’s role. Many of those who may have just heard me on BBC Radio Newcastle will disagree with what I said. But I stick by the belief that he did the right thing in March, ending the tragic disappointment of the Martin O’Neill managership and appointing PDC as head coach. The baggage was woefully mishandled, many of us had questions about Short’s selection and some supporters saw it as a step too far. But PDC, with two mighty wins and a lot of luck with other results, kept Sunderland up. Early as this season may be, he looked very much like taking us down. Short was right again, therefore, to act quickly. His next move, though, had better be very good indeed,
This, the clock ticking towards midnight after a long drive home from a weekend in the Alp with only Sixer’s gloomy texts from WBA to keep me in touch, is how I summarised my immediate thoughts for ESPN …
Pete Sixsmith hardly had time to bask in the glory of a deservedly praised piece at the ESPN site’s Sunderland pages – http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/sunderland/id/2100?cc=5739 – before he had to start writing again, this time on the news of Paolo Di Canio’s sacking. It kept him up late but he needed to get it off his chest …