Is it past midnight? Then let’s begin this week’s Guess the Score.
I live in hope that one of our moneyed readers will one day come up with meaningful prizes for the little competitions. In the meantime, I am once again offering a Martin O’Neill mug to the first person who correctly posts the outcome of tomorrow’s game at Loftus Road. Before kickoff, that is.
Good news for Pam Stokoe, whose name has special resonance around these parts. Her mug, won with a correct if disloyal 0-1 forecast for the SAFC v Arsenal game, has finally been ordered.
Good news for Eric, who posts regularly to the Comments section and invariably offers a prediction. I will take his 3-0, which appears at the end of the Fulham “Who are You?” – about which he was less than enthusiastic – as a valid entry. I also hope it comes true.
Three games – Swansea at home, Wigan and Reading away, and not a single reader came up with a correct scoreline prediction. See if you can do better with Arsenal at home. Snowed off is not an acceptable entry …
The update is that if Heathrow can see its way clear to letting Monsieur Salut’s plane take off, holidays in Sri Lanka beckon. Salut! Sunderland‘s deputy editor, Malcolm Dawson, has already reached exotic parts, Lytham St Annes, and is there for a few days.
Last week, I honestly thought someone, possibly a Bolton fan, had decided the FA Cup game had 2-2 written all over it. I could find no trace of such a prediction; did I just dream it? If anyone can point me in its direction, then the man, woman or child who made it is owed a mug.
This is a posting that could not decide whether to be one of those occasional Salut! Sunderland reviews of the week just gone, a simple Guess the Score competition or a second bite at the “Who are You?” cherry.
Monsieur Salut thought of rolling them all into one but finally accepted the rebuke of Terry McLoughlin who, while boldly offering a scoreline forecast of Liverpool 1 SAFC 2, questioned the device of mixing up Guess the Score and further debate on the Tottenham Hotspur post-Olympics diving squad. “Too much talk, too few predictions,” Terry thundered.
Happy New Year from Salut! Sunderland
They cannot all read and write as well as Michael Gove would like, but it was good to have so many Tottenham fans coming here to respond to Pete Sixsmith’s dangerously provocative comments.
Consider these samples taken from the offending march report:
“Spurs played well, looked a potential top four side” … “they had a little bit too much for us” … Lloris “had an outstanding last half hour, his punching the ball a great lesson for any aspiring keeper”.
Guess the Score had become a bit of a chore. Week after week, loyal Sunderland fans would predict narrow or comfortable wins in the full knowledge that a somewhat different result was a lot more likely.
One big festival. Two big games. Two big chances to win Guess the Score.
The first bit is easy. Salut! Sunderland‘s tireless team of writers and illustrators – all, or nearly all, fellow supporters of that great thing that is SAFC – offers all readers, from near and far, a wonderful Christmas.
This is how I have described the Poznan non-issue for readers of ESPN FC:
Hundreds of hospital wards, we are told, have been closed by the spread of Norovirus.
But another nasty bug – the Poznan virus – is doing the rounds and has affected worrying numbers of Manchester United supporters who have gone down with distressing symptoms ranging from gross over-reaction and humourlessness to an irrational desire for vengeance.
Fortunately for those whose responsibility it is to cope with this outbreak, the cause has already been identified: lingering United anger at the Poznan-style mockery indulged in by some supporters of Sunderland, to the amusement of many more (and neutrals), at the end of the final game of last season at the Stadium of Light.