John McCormick writes: Tony Fay and I were colleagues once but our paths diverged a good few years ago and I didn’t know whether I’d be able to contact him or if he’d want to take part in the Who are You? series.
I’m glad to be able to report that I was and he did as Tony, with apologies to Blackadder, is redder than a red squirrel which fell into a bucket of red paint at a Simply Red concert. Here’s his view on all things Liverpool, and some things Sunderland:
The only way forward is to forget the most recent past. Let’s all regard SAFC 1-4 Manchester City as if it were another country, some minor detail of history (as Jean-Marie Le Pen once described the Holocaust). Just get out there at Anfield and rattle a few cages again.
Can we bounce back? Can we pressurise Simon Mignolet into making one or two of those unforced errors of his, or reduce Jordan to his ineffectual, own goal-scoring self of earlier in the season?
I suppose the referendum on Scottish independence was the starting point for this post, that and my trip up for …
Colin Randall writes: John McCormick supports Sunderland, of course, but lives in Liverpool. Even if he did not, he’d be entitled to a view about Liverpool/Everton stadium plans. After all, we’ve all been, or most of us have, to Anfield and Goodison. Here is what John makes of the interminable ramblings in Scouseland about where the two sides should play …
Read this article from @Knox_Harrington ! He red my mind! Thank you…
— fabio borini (@borinifabio29) September 3, 2014
The world and his dog have a view on the Fabio Borini affair. My own is well known: he is not paid to be a Sunderland supporter but for being a professional footballer, and must be allowed to
make his own choices, but I do bitterly regret all the wasted effort to bring him back when it was clear all along he’d sooner take a break from active football. Even those Sunderland supporters who profess not to care too much that this, indeed, is the outcome express a view merely by saying just that. What of Borini himself? And Liverpool fans? It is likely we still know only part of the story of how he now comes to be kicking his heels at Anfield with, apparently, little real prospect of breaking into the team on Brendan Rodgers’s present thinking.Well, Borini read the article we reproduce today from the excellently written Liverpool fan site The Anfied Wrap and gave it the seal of approval you see above. So step forward the author, Neil Atkinson, from whom we have heard before, with an introduction followed, with his consent, by the piece itself …
For the last couple of years I’ve reported on our progress towards the Deloitte Money Football League. I had just about started an update in February when other things took priority – we had a double to celebrate, then a cup final, and then we started digging what we thought was a grave, only it turned out to be a tunnel. I finished my piece around the start of the World Cup, when there was a lot going on and then went off on holiday. Now here we are, in the transfer window with friendlies underway and next season’s fixtures around the corner, and I’m hoping our esteemed editor can find space between Pete’s reports and Borini’s never-ending saga.
Here on Saturday the Suarez affair was bubbling under a bit, but quietly. It appeared Liverpool had not had any documentation from FIFA so didn’t know how or if they could proceed, although they have been told they are not eligible to appeal against the ban. That strikes me as unfair, given that they are innocent this time and FIFA’s action hurts them more than it hurts Uruguay.
I do wonder if England’s stance against alleged corruption was playing on anyone’s mind when the decision was made. If Suarez played for Real Madrid would the decision have been the same? I’m not convinced it would.
John McCormick, who – as many readers will know – lives in Liverpool, writes: Vince commented recently that The Sun now calls SAFC “Derland” after SAFC banned them from football-related briefings. The question I would ask is why is it doing this? It’s a stupid activity that does no one any good, least of all The Sun itself, and it is being done at just the wrong time …
This is the newspaper, and I use that term though others might not, that behaved disgracefully towards Liverpool supporters, indeed the whole city, 25 years ago. On the day Sunderland played West Ham the Hillsborough inquests reopened and, I’m sure, provided many Liverpudlians with a reminder of just how wrong The Sun got it.
Who’s feeling confident then? The game at Anfield was one I actually feared beforehand. It’s been a while since I’ve …
Pete Sixsmith was hardly alone in fearing the worst at Anfield. He is too long in the tooth to conclude from one improved display that Sunderland are on course to survival. The work that still needs doing is self-evident. It may be fully understood without lowering ourselves to more cliched talk of ‘must-win’ games. Pete is not responsible for the shameless headline; Monsieur Salut just happens to believe it to be the case …