Sunderland v Manchester United: the view from Old Trafford (1)

justin

No Sunderland player will need lifting for this one. We have played well against all the top clubs at home this season – and we came within an ace of winning at Old Trafford. Free from relegation stress, playing for pride and a top 10 finish, we can confound the received wisdom that this is an away banker.
Salut! Sunderland came across Justin Mottershead, United fan and football blogger*, when he named Kieran Richardson, just entering his best form of the season, in his worst Premier League XI. Who better, then, to star in our last-but-one Who Are You? feature of the season? Justin sees Kieran scoring the winner (sadly an own goal) but accepts that even this wouldn’t be enough to take the title back to Old Trafford …

Salut! Sunderland: So let’s get this out of the way: who will end up as the top four, in order, and – somewhat easier now than when the question was posed – bottom three?

Chelsea, United, Arsenal and Spurs. Pompey, Burnley and Hull.

Chelsea will win then title because Liverpool reserves will lie down and die, like Benitez and everyone else associated with the club wants them to. Spurs will get fourth just so Kia Joorbachian can sell Tevez to someone else in Europe and wipe the smile off the bitter blues faces.

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Premier League duds – or a dud list?

kieran

Here’s a team line-up with a difference: one man’s view of the worst players in the Premier League. One Sunderland regular, and one old boy, get nominations. The compiler gets an earful …

When a journalist runs out of things to say, he can always come up with a list. After all, Nick Hornby did it, over and again in High Fidelity, and made a fortune. So why not?

Justin Mottershead is a mature student in his final year of a journalism degree at City University London. He says he’s from Manchester and “obviously” loves United – the “obviously” is a little baffling to those of us who find the correlation not at all obvious – and his list is of the players he’d select for the Premier team from hell.

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