And so we have it: the fixtures are out. You’ll be getting your fill of dates, and conjecture from all over, no doubt, and enjoying the pre-season buzz of anticipation that it brings.
But when you’re tucked up under the sheets, reading Charles Buchan’s “Football Monthly” with a torch and reality bites, do you think you’ll win League One?
Or even get promoted?
If you do, please let us know. If you don’t, let us know who you think will make the grade.
Luton Town
Sunderland’s 10 relegations. Number 6: last game heartache again
John McCormick writes: we have a manager and the transfer window’s open. A new chapter in the SAFC story is about to begin. But we also have history, some good, some not so and we would do well to remember it. So here, with the hope that the players running up alps in Austria will find it when they when they plug themselves into their alternative worlds, is some of that history, courtesy of Pete Sixsmith.
Ten Years After: when Carlos Edwards and Keano warmed Sunderland hearts
Monsieur Salut writes: it seems an awful long time ago. Then, BBC Radio Newcastle’s brilliantly excitable Simon Crabtree had produced the Mother of all Goal Commentaries with his description of Carlos Edwards’s scintillating winner against Burnley to push us closer to promotion (achieved as champions with the 5-0 away win at Luton in the final game). It’s in the superb YouTube clip you see above.
But Ten Years After – OK, a little more than 10, since the Burnley match was on April 27 and the Luton game on May 6 – we all need to have our spirits lifted. Then, we were in the hands of the Drumaville consortium, a group of Irish businessmen led by Niall Quinn as chairman and Seaham-born John Hays as vice chairman. I have seen the message Niall sent Drumaville’s surviving veterans after our relegation was confirmed this season; it was a model of dignity and pride.
Can the memory of that astonishing bottom-to-top transformation inspire whoever, ultimately, accepts the job of managing Sunderland and whoever is subsequently the club’s owner(s). We shall see. But here is how we reported on promotion 10 years ago …
Sixer’s (1973) Sevens: SAFC 2 Luton Town 0. No mistakes
This is where Pete Sixsmith records his instant verdict, in seven words, on each Sunderland game. It is March 1973 and he’s a happy chappie after joining 53,150 other souls to watch the Lads dismiss Luton Town and set up an FA Cup semi-final against (well, we don’t know yet – the draw’s on Monday). We’re two days earlier that the actual 40th anniversary of the game but didn’t want this series to clash with Sunday’s real-time match versus Norwich city.
The Luton Soapbox: Sunderland take another stride towards Wembley
Pete Sixsmith thought he might have seen everything with the fabulous 3-1 win over mighty Man City in the fifth round. Luton Town presented less glamorous quarter-final opposition and the football was not quite so scintillating. But we’re in the semis and that is what counts … continuing our 40th anniversary celebrations of a great year for Sunderland (two days early to avoid a clash with Sunday’s game)
Gambles’ Rambles: West Ham clearcut enough, but resolve the playoff follies
Not really an end-of-term review, though it starts that way, so the morning after more playoff games seems as good a time as any to throw open the Salut! Sunderland floor once again to Ken Gambles. It also gives readers another chance to stand up for, or slag off, West Ham: my wager is they’ll do better than Reading or Southampton if they go up …