Such nights don’t come along too often. We’d won promotion and clinched the title, the team were out celebrating with …
Salut! Sunderland offers sincere congratulations to Liverpool and Fulham for two superb Europa League results overturning away deficits to beat Lille and Juventus respectively.
The gents’ toilets in the East Stand is a pretty good place to test the post match feelings of those refined and cultured Red and Whites who frequent that august structure. After a famous victory, it is buzzing with laughter and joy. After a humiliating defeat it is a place of doom and gloom. After horrible games like Sundays, it is a place of almost sepulchral quiet.
Colin Randall crowns a grand, pleasure-free day out at the Stadium of Light by sitting on a crowded Grand Central train stuck in the wilderness for more than three hours with no particular place to go
You know, said Lee, the man in the Wetherspoons pub before the game, I just have a feeling in my bones we’re going to beat them.
But didn’t Lee also think Aston Villa would win the Carling Cup, that Ryan Shawcross was a shade unlucky to be sent off and that the earth was very flat indeed?
In fact, isn’t Lee just the sort of optimist who’d convince himself the Grand Central train back down from Sunderland to Kings Cross would never in a million years manage to get stuck indefinitely behind a “failed train” in the middle of nowhere, allegedly between Huntingdon and Stevenage?
Once again, we wondered whether Lily Allen might be up for a contribution to our Who Are They? feature. Disregarding another Fulham fan who wrote in disparaging terms* to question her true allegiance – the Cottagers sic or Aberdeen – we duly invited her. With these results ,,,
Well, we put our questions to Lily Allen, famous for being a Fulham fan and probably game for such things … if only there wasn’t a brick wall in the shape of Murray Chalmers PR.
Last time we played Fulham, Murray’s charmer, Sarah, had a plausible excuse for a No: “Lily isn’t doing press.” (As if Salut! Sunderland could strictly speaking be called press, but we let that pass).
That’s cheating – the headline – because the star of SAFC is whoever, young or old, wins us three points at home to Fulham tomorrow. But Luke Harvey is a new star of Salut! Sunderland. He’s a poor deluded soul on two counts: he supports Sunderland (condemning him to a life of disappointment) and is a journalism student (no money in it unless he becomes Piers Morgan). No matter, he’s agreed to write for us to ease the burden on Pete Sixsmith and the ageing editor. This is Luke’s first offering (he may even add a photo later) …
Fulham bring me a lot of fond memories, not particularly as a Sunderland fan – but as a football fan in general.
They seem to embody everything I believe a football team should be about, a hard working and talented group who are lead by an experienced manager capable of masterminding a victory over any team.
On May 4 2006, Sunderland beat Fulham 2-1 in the last home game of the season, with Kevin Ball as caretaker manager. We were already doomed and all that was at stake was avoidance of the added humiliation of becoming the first team in English league history to fail to win a single tie at home all season. We do not have to go back quite as far now as we did then for the last Premier win (home or away): it was, of course, Nov 21 when we beat Arsenal and thought ourselves in clover.
Is Sunday to be our day? James Alexander Tizzard*, our undercover, non-Lily Allen Fulham fan discovered at the Cottage Corner fansite, thinks we will have to wait a little longer for our next victory. We should wish his team well tonight at Shakhtar Donetsk in the Europa League – and hope they’re too knackered to muster much of a challenge on Sunday …
Salut! Sunderland: As a Sunderland fan, I was embarrassed by our first half performance at Craven Cottage, and I know you all felt it was a 3-0 win dressed up as 1-0. Were you surprised at how bad we were?
At the start of the season, Sunderland looked like a side capable of pushing for Europe. The past two seasons you had dominated the games at our place so it was particularly suprising to witness such a poor first half display.
In the coming days, we’ll be hearing from a Fulham supporter – two, if Lily Allen’s publicity people pass Salut! Sunderland‘s questions on to her.
But for Sunderland supporters, it’s time to come to the aid of the club. Our fans deserve better than they’ve had to endure this season – and for most preceding seasons – but they also have a part to play in kickstarting the revival, says a (temporarily) mellowing Colin Randall …
Right. The defeat at Arsenal, hardly unexpected, is behind us. The terrible run of defeats and draws since we beat the Gunners in November is in the past, too. We’ve had our say, expressed our bitter disappointment and raised legitimate questions about the club, its management and its direction.
But that’s it. We now enter a spell of games at the Stadium of Light – four home ties with just one scheduled trip, a match at Aston Villa that their probable FA Cup progress tonight would put off – in which a combination of ability, commitment and – yes- luck would give our season a decent lift off.
You have been warned. Pete Sixsmith has been in better moods. Sunderland-supporting readers of a sensitive disposition may wish to lock themselves into a small padded room and listen to the collected works of Jedward. If you’re built of stronger stuff, this is Pete’s verdict on a Sunday by the Thames made so dismal by Steve Bruce’s dunces that he wishes he’d stayed in the White Horse and ordered a £9 pint of Thomas Hardy ale. What on earth did Niall Quinn’s guest, Martina Navratilova, make of it? …
As I dragged myself from a warm bed this morning, still groggy after a long journey back from the latest away shambles, I heard the BBC newsreader say that the Government were worried about an increase in depression and anxiety.
One way to prevent this malaise among the red and white army, I snorted, would be to teach defenders to attack the ball when it is punted into the penalty box.
Another away game, another display lacking in guile and (in the first half) even commitment. For the first time, one or two fans are beginning to mutter that phrase: relegation dogfight. That may be an exaggeration; surely all the promise from good performances at home and heroics at Old Trafford cannot have evaporated. Yet Sunderland at Fulham – maintaining the standard of Sunderland at Stoke, Burnley, Birmingham and Wigan – were about as attractive as the back end of the Don Wood’s bus from Murton that I was stuck behind in the west London traffic jam after the match …
Expect a roasting for Sunderland when Pete Sixsmith delivers his Soapbox sermon later today.
The first half was an insult to the marvellous travelling support. The second half, for all our bluster, lacked serious quality in any of the areas of the pitch where it mattered. We never looked like scoring from the half chances that came our way and ended the game pegged in our own half without the least promise of an undeserved equaliser.