Millwall

The first time ever I saw your team: Millwall

by
Sleek Sixer …

John McCormick writes – I  do remember a trip to the Old Den in the ’70s but like Pete Sixsmith, I struggle to remember seeing Millwall at Roker and it’s possible I never did.  From 1970 I was a student down south in Yorkshire and I often played sport rather than watched it. I did get back to some games so I can’t rule this one out, especially as it was played in May, but Pete’s account includes a player who, like the game, stirs nothing in what’s left of my memory. Luckily, that’s not the case with Mr Sixsmith:

Read more

If Millwall’s visit isn’t worrying enough, Steve Bruce’s Aston Villa are up next

by
An ominous reunion with our former boss looms. Portrait of Steve Bruce by Owen Lennox, an acclaimed Sunderland artist

Sunderland’s shameful home record will become officially the worst in English football history on Saturday if Millwall are not beaten at the Stadium of Light. Nineteen games – 18 in the Premier League and Championship and one in the FA Cup – have passed since a scrappy 1-0 defeat of Watford in December last year. That is a winless home run shared by Dagenham and Redbridge, Derby County and Nottingham Forest. Are we really about to make the record our own? Stand by for a bleak assessment of our club’s present crisis …


Perhaps the best that can be said about the visit to Aston Villa next Tuesday is that at least Sunderland won’t be at home. The match comes four days after the managerless club must beat Millwall to avoid setting that wholly unwanted record for failing to win at home.

Read more

Sunderland vs Millwall prize Guess the Score: will the wretched run finally end?

by
Jake: ‘make our day!’

As the laborious and uninspiringly low-profile search for a new manager goes on, Sunderland return to Championship action with only a month left of the year since we last won at home.

Can we finally get three points at the Stadium of Light without needing three games to do so? Will Ellis Short accuse the media of making it up if we don’t?

Read more

Middlesbrough, Villa, Fulham, Sheffield Wed, Leeds, Norwich top six. Bristol and Burton Albion – ‘nul points’

by
John McCormick: We're not bottom, so is it a Happy Christmas?
John McCormick. Going for a Burton

Should I be disappointed? Not with the goings-on at the offices and by the officers of Sunderland Football Club but with the response to my “who’ll be the top six” poll. In 2015 our “who’s going down” poll had over 7,000 votes cast, last year we had over 2,500.

This year it wasn’t until events at the club brought in new readers that we got past 1,000 votes. To date we have had perhaps 200-300 readers bothering to take part. What’s more, whereas in the past we have had interesting and entertaining comments from fans from other clubs this year we had had nothing. Is this what the championship’s like? Or is it the Ellis Short effect? I don’t know.

Read more

Reading at last? Norwich perhaps, or Derby, Leeds, ‘Boro and Sheffield? What’s your fancy?

by
John McCormick:
John McCormick. Here we go again – but this time it’s different

I was away last week and didn’t log on much, on account of having a temperamental handheld device (a tip – don’t drop your computer onto a tiled surface) and iffy connections courtesy of a not-so-local bar.

But log on I did, twice.

The first time, it was to find three quarters of our readers thought our chances of immediate promotion were scuppered.

On my second log-in Colin’s poll had closed and the number had dropped to 70%. That’s still quite a damning figure.

Me, I’m not so pessimistic.

Read more

Salut! Sunderland Nostalgia: stuck in the mud after Millwall end cup dream

by

MudImage: Peter Burgess

Monsieur Salut is back in the UK, will be at Southampton on Saturday and awaits a winning goal from John O’Shea, who crowned his magnificent career in international football with a last-gap equaliser for Ireland as he claimed his 100th cap against Germany. Whatever happens at St Mary’s, Salut! Sunderland salutes John’s great achievement.

Ahead of that, let’s take another shameless dip into the archives, from the days when Salut! Sunderland had so few readers such postings were probably not seen at all. It did also appear in a matchday SAFC programme but if you missed it in either place, and have a soft spot for other people’s hard luck stories, read on. You’ll learn about a Big Match day out – our last appearance in an FA Cup semi-final, back in 2004 – that sticks nastily in the memory for some Sunderland supporters …

Read more

Fifty years of Sunderland openers: (2) visions of hell at Millwall

by

millwall prog2

The New Den is hardly the Old Den. Back in 2000, a semi-reformed Millwall Yob-and-Proud-of-It – he’d become a published author telling of his exploits – told me people were hypocritical about football hooligans because they created all the atmosphere in grounds. Pete Sixsmith, looking back in the second of this series on opening fixtures of his past, could be forgiven for thinking otherwise after experiencing a special Old Den welcome reserved for supporters of visiting teams with the audacity to score a few times. Some of the assailants that day, 40 years ago, will now be in their 80s and, presumably, causing havoc with their walking sticks in south London old people’s homes …

Read more

Grounds for divorce: Everton, Leeds and West Ham share the dishonours

by
Ken: not a fan of Goodison, Elland Rd or Upton Park

Ken Gambles gets around. Sunderland support has taken him all over the country. Worst ground, offering grounds for divorce after a lifelong love affair with football? The old Den probably took the biscuit for Monsieur Salut – a demoralising experience that had you questioning your own sanity for being there – and if we are honest, some opposing fans will point fingers at Roker Park or the SoL. But Ken has a negative batch of medals to award to three other stadiums …

Read more