Luke Harvey

Sunderland report cards: (5) my 40,000 reasons for demanding more guts

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Luke Harvey

The end-of-season reviews have been thought-provoking and varied, from M Salut’s own maybe excessive support for Steve Bruce – whose continued defence of the failure to replace Darren Bent defies logic – to the hard-hitting analysis offered by subsequent writers. Two, possibly three, remain to be fitted in before Pete Sixsmith has the final word. Here, Luke Harvey* discusses our respectable average attendances and asks the club to match the commitment he has made for next season …

“Twenty-five thousand empty seats…” came the chanting from burly shaven-headed males as the Newcastle-Sunderland free train trundled towards its destination.

??Needless to say my head was dipped low and any thoughts that popped into my head remained there; they were never verbalised as I was very much the minority among the crowd of travelling Newcastle fans.

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Luke’s World: a night for SAFC and Chelsea to commemorate a goalie’s death

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Tonight we play Chelsea and the players will commemorate the day 75 years ago that a Sunderland goalkeeper took a kick to the face that did not just end his career but cost him his life. Luke Harvey insisted that Salut! Sunderland should mark the anniversary and he was right …

As the transfer window slammed shut with an almighty bang, and you can’t deny it did, p eople up and down the country are analysing the effects of their teams’ transfer dealings. Not to mention the fact that someone is trying to surgically remove the grin from David Craig’s face after he got to spend the entire evening discussing his favourite subject: Newcastle United.

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Luke’s World: an Everton postscript

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In which Luke Harvey sticks up for his fellow youngster Jordan Henderson, whose performance against Everton has been sharply criticised by a number of longer-in-the-tooth supporters. But then Luke still cannot quite get Chelsea out of his mind …

Monday night’s match against Everton showed that you don’t have to be the best teams in the league to produce football of high entertainment value.

Nor do you need the best players in the world, for they are all dodging high tax bands and competing in that duopoly that is La Liga. While Real and Barcelona thump even the better teams in the league by four or five goals, it’s a continuous battle here in England.

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Jordan Henderson: after Chelsea glory, the Wembley grounding

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We cannot really be sure what to think about those five out of 10s in this morning’s England match reports, or the barbed “not quite ready” remarks on one debutant’s individual performance in a poor team performance. Maybe we should just be quietly content; we know how good Jordan Henderson is and it’ll do Sunderland no harm if the rest of the world, and notably the predatory “big clubs”, reach a kneejerk conclusion that he’s not – yet – such a star after all. Luke’s World oozes the common sense thoughts of Luke Harvey …

The child in me is still delirious after the weekend’s triumph but seeing our very own Jordan Henderson struggle against a disciplined French side was a slightly bitter pill to swallow.

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Luke’s Blackburn World: truly, truly awful

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No goals, no great creativity, precious few thrills – and yet they’re queueing up to say what they think. First Monsieur Salut! with his immediate post-match thoughts, later Pete Sixsmith will doubtless tell us the highlight of his evening occurred on the other side of the Pennines long before kickoff. Between those two grumps, let’s hear from a deeply unimpressed Luke Harvey …

As I jumped in my best friend’s car to nip up to the pub, and avoid the admittedly rather short walk, I was told Monday night’s match would either be “brilliant, or very bad”.

I laughed at my friend’s naivety, how could he be so daft? “Oh it’s going to be awful. This match will be truly, truly awful.” I replied, entirely seriously as well. He laughed, I laughed and we went and watched the truly, truly awful match together.

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A mate’s death in combat made Sunderland’s season less important

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Luke Harvey – pictured below – renews his acquaintance with these pages with his first Luke’s World contribution for some time. With good reason has there been a gap: Luke gets round to football but first explains his recent silence. The explanation is brief, to the point and reminds us of priorities. The posting first appeared overnight but the photos have been switched to reflect the relative importance Luke attaches to events …

It’s been a while since I offered anything up to Salut! Sunderland, one of my main stops as I quench my thirst for anything Sunderland related.

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Luke’s world: banish Benfica blues – see our fantasy England team

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AND come back later today for our Eric Roy interview

Here would be as good a place as any for people to post their thoughts on Benfica 2 Sunderland 0. The official club site’s stuttering text coverage had us playing some good stuff at times, though we were often second best. Consolation for two Sunderland players (one of whom played last night): they’re both in the make-believe England team Luke Harvey selects in case Capello banned his entire World Cup squad from the next game, as Laurent Blanc has done in France …

When Laurent Blanc announced that the 23 French players who travelled to South Africa would be banned for the next match, the English media made sure we knew just who the new manager could call upon to face Norway.

Real Madrid players Lassana Diarra and Karim Benzema, alongside Arsenal’s Samir Nasri will be likely call-ups for the match, having been omitted from the World Cup squad.

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Luke’s world: are the French just firing Blancs?

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Luke Harvey believes the one-match ban on French players for their playground tantrum in South Africa is both ineffectual and, by punishing the (possibly) innocent, unfair. The truth remains confused: the French sports minister spoke of the bullies and the meek but players who have spoken publicly insist everyone was up for the strike with no good guy/bad guy split. Picking his way through a murky story, Luke finds it in his heart to wish Laurent Blanc well …

Laurent Blanc’s first move as manager of the French national team was a serious statement of intent. The entire 23-man squad who represented the country so poorly in South Africa would be dropped for the next match. That’s every single player, even the ones who didn’t get a chance to set foot on the pitch during the disastrous campaign …

Now it could be said that everyone was as bad as each other, that no one disembarked the coach to train on that dark day in French football history. Yet the claim could also be made that a player such as Mathieu Valbuena, young and barely capped, is highly unlikely to go against the status quo as Messrs Evra, Ribery, Henry and Cisse sat with sullen faces and folded arms in their childish protest at Nicolas Anelka’s dismissal from the national squad.

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Luke’s World Cup: roll on 2014

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Almost done in South Africa but it seems an awful long time since England were still involved. Luke Harvey tries to look forward four years to the next World Cup and wonders where our version of Mesut Ozil might come from …

Salut! Sunderland’s World Cup coverage has betrayed an uncanny resemblance to Christmas day in the Harvey household.

Much as we begin our Christmas Day as a united and happy family, we also began the World Cup with arms linked and faces smiling; we were ready to will England to victory.

And much like Christmas Day, it’s all ended in rather petty squabbling.

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