Malcolm Dawson, deputy editor, writes: this hiatus which falls between the end of season and the opening of the transfer window sees me scouring the media for scraps of gossip that may or may not indicate which way the club is going. Most of it will turn out to be idle speculation and bear little resemblance to what actually transpires between the 1st of July and the end of August.
Malcolm Dawson writes……it’s a proven fact that we all feel better when our chosen football team is doing well and that poor on field results can bring disappointment and depression.
It may only be a game but football fans are stuck with their team. Some glory hunters might chop and change but the true supporter has no options. I was a fresher at college when Sunderland last won anything meaningful and now I’m only a couple of years away from a state pension.
Our first FA Cup win happened 17 years before I was born and the last League Championship Sunderland claimed was the year before that. Eighty years ago in fact. So success is not something we are used to.
Should we be doing better? Surely we should at least be doing as well as Stoke City, West Ham or Spurs. Surely we should be better than Watford, Southampton and Leicester City and no disrespect is intended towards those clubs. 1973 apart Sunderland AFC have been perennial underachievers, at least in our own eyes for eight decades now. Little windows of optimism have promptly been slammed shut again.
We all have views on the causes of our current malais but if he hasn’t already done so, maybe the owner of the club should take a long, hard look at his tenure in charge.
Salut! Sunderland’s deputy editor Malcolm Dawson is among several to have answered Monsieur Salut’s call for contributions to the new series on Sunderland tops you’ve known and loved or hated. All offerings will be published while the series runs its course. Malcolm’s recollections of the mustard-coloured top we wore for the Charlton playoff final is a bitter-sweet tale of more than one disappointment. Check out the SAFC tops offered by our friends at http://bit.ly/1ZNPCJA”>Classic Football Shirts …
Colin Randall writes: it is not just Sunderland AFC that knows the meaning of struggle. Salut! Sunderland has its moments, too. I am talking readership levels. Victory – and defeats for those who remember them – in the Wear-Tyne derbies always boost numbers, though not as much as they once did. So do John McCormick’s statistical epics on relegation prospects among the bottom eight (or so) clubs. When Monsieur Salut, John or deputy editor Malcolm Dawson come up with a catchy headline, the effect can be the same because of the way website aggregators work. The common denominator, I am sad to say, is other clubs. We often draw big hits when the content, and therefore the headlines, mention them. Purely Sunderland-themed articles do not, with honourable exceptions, have the same effect.
This suggests we are not quite getting it right for SAFC supporters. Our Facebook group has more than 500 members but there are some days when we do not attract even that number of visitors to the site. Here, after John McCormick has set the scene, is your chance to tell us what it is we are doing wrong, what we should be more or better, what we should not be doing at all …
Malcolm Dawson writes….my choice of match today was Consett v Bradford Park Avenue in the FA Cup second qualifying round. …
Malcolm Dawson was about 6 when he went to his first ever live football match. He doesn’t remember much about …
Malcolm Dawson‘s revived series of reflections, first published in 2013, on the Good, Bad and Ugly among the foreign players he has seen in Sunderland colours has provided a fascinating summer distraction as we await news of more such signings, with maybe the odd Englishman thrown in. Here, our deputy editor updates the story to take account of the men from afar who have joined us – and left us – since the series appeared …
Deputy Editor Malcolm Dawson’s series, reproduced from 2013, has tracked the Sunderland careers, long and short, of players from overseas. …
Scarcely a day goes by without Sunderland being linked to a foreign player. Until proper announcements are made, we have little idea of where rumour ends and fact begins. Deputy Editor Malcolm Dawson has seen it all before, albeit not in such numbers. Among them, there have been the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Summer Madness, a series reproducing good reads of the past, has already brought you the Good (
https://safc.blog/2015/07/summer-madness-2-the-good-bad-and-ugly-of-sunderlands-foreign-legion/). Here Malcolm recalls some of the imports from SAFC history who were, er, less influential signings …
Malcolm Dawson writes…….for our pre derby WAY we enter the cloistered world of academia and find Durham University don Adrian Darnell proving that the phrase “intelligent Newcastle United fan” does not have to be an oxymoron. Adrian and I regularly cross swords over the Bridge table, where he is happy to play in Hearts and Diamonds, but steadfastly refuses to back my campaign to have our regular packs of cards replaced with those where Clubs are green and Spades are blue. The past couple of weeks have seen the boardrooms of both clubs in turmoil for different reasons, but it’s the action on the pitch that is in the forefront of our minds this week. Here’s how Adrian sees things in black and white with an honest and thoughtful set of answers.