Martin O’Neill‘s post-match e-mail recognises that Liverpool hardly robbed us but praises a good team effort and some outstanding individual performances …
Liverpool
Sixer’s Sevens: SAFC 1 Liverpool 1 – ultimately happy to share the spoils
Pete Sixsmith’s welcome return to Sixer’s Sevens, and Sunderland’s welcome return to playing at home as well as away in the Premier, saw Steve Fletcher offer another response to those who questioned his fee. His goal came from Sunderland’s first decent passing move of the first half, though our play then became brighter until Liverpool gradually regained an upper hand and deservedly equalised after a spell of excellent play on the right by 17-year-old Raheem Sterling created an opening that Suarez buried. Bramble was probably unlucky rather than bumbling in providing the final pass …
Predictions League. Sunderland, Liverpool, Everton, Newcastle, Norwich, Hammers – how will they fare?
Stephen Goldsmith writes: I received an e-mail from Luke apologising for his no entry into the predictions last week. He …
Salut’s Week: Hillsborough reflections, the McClean tweet and preparing for Liverpool
Much space at Salut! Sunderland has been devoted this week to articles that I am proud to have published on this site but wish had never been written. Naturally, I refer to the impassioned, decent and – yes – angry pieces written by individual Sunderland supporters with voices worth hearing on the Hillsborough disaster and this week’s shamefully late official exoneration of the Liverpool fans who were cynically blamed for its occurrence.
Hillsborough and a Sunderland view from Liverpool: no ‘sense of jubilation’
John McCormick, the third Sunderland supporter to collect his thoughts and write on these pages about the agonisingly late recognition of Hillsborough truths, has a special reason to care enough to say what he thinks. Liverpool his adopted city, his children’s birthplace and the place from which friends and colleagues set off that day in 1989 to watch a game of football in Sheffield …
Sunderland v Liverpool: history gives SAFC the edge but guess the score
NB Posting of Sixer’s Sevens and Martin’s Musings may be delayed this weekend … come here with reflections on the match
It is time for another test of your predictive powers.
Hillsborough: truths that were always known, a victory that remains bitter-sweet
Image: Ben SutherlandIn his moving words here yesterday on the long-delayed vindication of Liverpool supporters caught in the horror of Hillsborough 1989, Jeremy Robson mentioned being at one non-Sunderland game that afternoon as news of the disaster spread and thinking instantly of a close friend who was another, the Liverpool-Notts Forest FA Cup semi-final. That friend was Mick Goulding and this, reproduced with his consent from the Blackcats email list, is how Mick recalls an avoidable tragedy and the systematic distortion of the reasons it occurred …
The Robson Report: Hillsborough guilt and shame and glimmers of human compassion
The Hillsborough report has shocked all who have an ounce of compassion and care about decency in public life. Some messengers – notably The Sun – also bear culpability and Kelvin MacKenzie’s ‘profuse apologies’ now do not wash. But always remember it was the public services, or champions of those working within them, that created the message and ensured it was disseminated, focusing blame for 96 deaths – nearly half of them, perhaps, avoidable in any case – on entirely the wrong people. Jeremy Robson has his say; it is a painful but necessary read …
SAFC v Liverpool ‘Who are You?’: on Suarez and Kenny, Jordan and Adam
Whether the past 10 days represent, for you, the tedium of an international break or thrills on the road to Rio 2014, the return to Premier football is welcome enough to justify bringing forward this weeek’s ‘Who are You?’. Sunderland play Liverpool on Saturday evening and we asked David Wooding*, a Reds-supporting journalist and broadcaster who runs political coverage at the News of the World’s successor, The Sun on Sunday, to talk about his club. Whatever we feel about The Sun’s role after the Hillsborough disaster, David had no involvement with the paper then** and this item from his own website indicates that he shares the broad view of supporters everywhere, using the term ‘slur’ to describe the disgraceful suggestion that drunken Liverpool fans arriving late for the FA Cup semi-final were to blame (from today’s damning independent report: ‘The evidence shows conclusively that Liverpool fans neither caused nor contributed to the deaths of 96 men, women and children’ …
An open letter to James McClean – plus the winners of tickets for Liverpool
As the international break meanders on, three things are on Sunderland supporters’ minds: the hope that Adam Johnson’s injury has no effect in his availability, the even stronger hope that we get our first Premier win of the season at home to Liverpool on Saturday and the James McClean tweet saga (of which more, indirectly, later) …