Most people coming here know by now that ESPN has asked me to contribute to its FC Network club-by-club pages.
Several articles have appeared there already. The idea is that they have to be original, not just copy-and-paste exercises reproducing material from Salut! Sunderland.
Pete Sixsmith braved flooded roads, concrete cows and Cattermolian excesses to bring you this report of an otherwise satisfactory night out in Milton Keynes …
On March 21, Lee Barry Cattermole will be 24. Hardly a milestone, it is nevertheless an age at which a footballer might be expected to have acquired some degree of self-discipline.
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Another Saturday morning review of the week as seen by Salut! Sunderland …
Martin O’Neill’s dramatic last-gasp win in his first game as manager set us up for a great week for banter and upbeat thought.
Whatever happens at Spurs tomorrow afternoon – and no pundit is likely to give us a hope – we have seen reason to believe better times may lie ahead.
M Salut
offers some advice to Martin O’Neill on the fines he may wish to consider imposing after yesterday’s defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory at Molineux …
The competition – click here – to come up with a new name for Martin O’Neill column at Salut! Sunderland is still open.
OK, the new manager does not yet know he’s to have one. But whether he chooses to sent out post-match e-mails or rely on simple statements and comments, his thoughts will be distilled on these pages just as Steve Bruce’s were.
This is a headline from the BBC website today: Reputation preceeds me – Sunderland midfielder Cattermole I wouldn’t mind betting …
Salut! Sunderland has not checked the provenance of the Caught Offside website’s report that SAFC – apologies for the lapse into tabloidspeak – are “bracing themselves for a summer approach from Tottenham for combative midfielder Lee Cattermole”.
If Saturday in Sunderland was cold by normal standards, it was positively balmy by comparison with what was happening almost everywhere else. But 1245 is a rotten kickoff time, as witnessed by empty seats that cannot all be attributed to the weather. All the same, three good points made it all seem like a heatwave. Pete Sixsmith reports on the tough encounter that awaited those of us who made the effort …
Could there have been a worse time for this game? The Saturday before Christmas, a 1245 kick off and visitors who rarely bring more than a couple of coachloads of fans.
Add to that the fact that many people still see Bolton as the personification of grimness in football and I think we did bloody well to attract just under 35,000 Sunderland fans to the Stadium on Saturday.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s the embryo of a body of contrition hovering over the Emirates stadium as it dawns on Arsenal folk that their self-canonised saints of football may also, from time to time, stray from the path of purity …
Cesc Fabregas is a magical footballer, a convincing contender for any choice of the Premier League’s finest. He is also, necessarily, strong, fast and committed.
So realistic supporters, whether they are Gooners or follow Sunderland or Chelsea, Wolves or Stoke or indeed anyone else, can sympathise with Fabregas when he tells his manager he hadn’t the slightest wish to injure Stephen Ward of Wolves. Yet it was challenge that some felt merited a card of a different colour than the yellow shown by Mark Halsey.
On top but wobbly. That was the essence of the text messages from the Stadium of Light. Great to secure three points, but television replays show just how wobbly it was …
Salut! Sunderland rattles on week after week about cheating and is among the first to whinge when appalling decisions cost Sunderland points.
Arsenal fans, some of them, came here in self-righteous indignation when, week after week, we asked opposing fans in our Who Are You? feature the Eduardo Question – essentially are you ashamed when one of yours cheats? Our questionnaire before each game still includes a question on the same subject.
But we cannot have it both ways, and we don’t.
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