Kevin Phillips

Salut!’s week: Liverpool’s lost mojo, winning lasses and scattered Mackems

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Image: Mrs Logic

Last weekend was another one without football, at any rate for Sunderland supporters. But there have still been plenty of talking points, plus the build-up to tomorrow’s Sunderland v Liverpool match, to keep Salut! Sunderland busy, as the latest digest of the past week shows …

The Lads had a break but the Lasses had work to do. Sunderland Women’s Football Club produced a strong second-half performance to beat Lincoln City, from the Super League to which Sunderland were disgracefully denied entry, for a place if the FA Women’s Cup quarter-finals.

They face an even tougher task in the 6th round a week tomorrow – Arsenal at home – and possibly a tougher one still in persuading the official SAFC website to take a blind bit of notice in their admirable achievements. Perhaps someone can explain why safc.com studiously ignores the girls, or direct us to some well-hidden corner of the site, overlooked by me, where their cup and Premier League progress is properly recorded.

For those who missed our week, or parts of it, here is a quick guide to what we’ve been doing. If anything takes your fancy, click on the sub-heading to see the item in full:

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Cup wishlist: Man United, Man City out. Arsenal or Reading’s trophy

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Bob Stokoe statue, Stadium of Light, SunderlandImage: Mrs Logic

Salut! Sunderland has absolutely nothing against the city of Manchester. We hold no grudges against Stoke or Bolton.

But choices have to be made. Sunderland’s humiliating exit at the earliest possible stage of the FA Cup means we have been able to pick our runners at will in subsequent rounds.

So to do our bit to restore interest in the ailing old competition, colours will now be nailed to the FA Cup mast.

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Darren Bent: no more than we expected

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The FA, in traditionally clueless fashion, mucked up the announcement of Fabio Capello’s final squad, allowing names of players supposedly omitted or included to be leaked all over the shop while, for whatever reason, dithering over an official statement. At 3pm BST, they finally got round to saying there’d be an announcement in an hour. Why couldn’t they have made this clear earlier, or explained why they couldn’t make it clear? Are they really as hard of thinking as they seem determined to appear? And so it was in the end confirmed, and to no great surprise among Sunderland fans, that Capello had found no room for Darren Bent in the 23-strong squad heading for South Africa. Darren – the great image is from Addick-TedKevin‘s Flickr pages – has learnt a sharp lesson from the Book of Certainties: to be both a Sunderland player, and chosen for England, is one of football’s tallest orders …

When Kevin Keegan picked Kevin Phillips, then the best striker in the Premier League and not even playing in a top six team, to go to Holland and Belgium for Euro 2000, some of us looked forward to seeing how our star would fare at international level.

He was never given the chance.

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Clough or SuperKev or Marco?

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Must be something to do with watching Diego Milito’s sublime finishing for Inter Milan last night and wondering whether he’s had time to consider a move to Sunderland, where he and Darren Bent could strike up a useful partnership – and challenge for places in our parade of best-ever strikers …


There are things that happened last week that I barely remember. The memory of Brian Clough’s ultimately career-ending injury, colliding with Bury’s goalkeeper Chris Harker in the light snow of Roker Park, is so clear that it might have happened earlier today, rather than Boxing Day 1962.

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Not good enough for England? A Bent judgement

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Bent for England. The cry was heard again after his latest goalscoring feats. But some observers feel Fabio Capello will not be swayed by his remarkable record in a team that – at least before our mini-run – had hardly kept him supplied with a consistent stream of quality service …

The Daily Star is not a newspaper to which Salut! Sunderland turns as a matter of everyday routine.

It may be a fountain of wisdom and truth, but we prefer other sources of information. But an item about Darren Bent’s suitability – or supposed unsuitability – for a place in England’s World Cup squad leapt from the laptop page.

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Who are you? We’re Sunderland

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Seemed only fair. Jonathan Fear, from Vital Villa, previewed the Carling Cup match for us so I agreed to return the favour. Salut! Sunderland often asks rival fans the “lazy interviewer’s question” – inviting them to ask something we forgot but they wanted to answer. Jonathan made the ultimate refinement of this device by leaving it to me to ask all the questions as well as answer them …


Good start to the season for Sunderland, with important wins already (question posed before St Andrew’s!) Is this going to be a big season for you?

Certainly better. How big remains to be seen. Ellis Short, our new owner made a top 10 finish his target and I would have settled cheerfully for that until we nearly beat man United and then beat Liverpool. So let’s be bold as say seventh, maybe even sixth.

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Soapbox: second city Blues

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As Pete Sixsmith packs his knapsack for Sunderland’s visit to St Andrew’s, he reflects on past encounters between our clubs – and a rare old night in Durham after one of them …

Maybe we should have some affinity with Birmingham City. Like us, they are widely perceived as the second club out of three, living in the shadows of Aston Villa, but bigger than West Bromwich Albion.

That’s like us with the Mags and the Boro. We know that we are a better, smarter and altogether nicer club than our neighbours up the A184, while we have always looked down on those who dwell in the smog encrusted town down south on the A19.

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Who are you? We are Birmingham City

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Who better than Kevin Phillips to talk about this Saturday’s Birmingham City v Sunderland clash? A man with bags of time for both sets of fans, a player who served both clubs well (in our case, outstandingly). There was a snag. The brush-off we received last time we raised such an impertinence with St Andrew’s suggested a phrase containing waste and time. John Baker*, an exiled Midlander who runs the Blues Muse site, is not SuperKev, but he does come up with some punchy answers, one beach ball gag and a fair amount of disdain for Steve Bruce …

Salut! Sunderland: You were pretty dire in the Carling Cup at the Stadium of Light. I take it we’ll encounter a different Birmingham City at St Andrew’s.

You beat our fourth string that reputedly doesn’t exist . . . but they somehow manage to find their way into the first team now and again. It’s true we fielded a weakened team in the Carling Cup against you chaps, but you were world beaters on the night, right?

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