Another big Sunderland following will be on the road this weekend for the visit to Coventry City and the Ricoh, hardly a name with the appeal to any football fan of Highfield Road but the one demanded by the Japanese sponsors of the the sports, hotel and shopping complex where it is situated.
Will the travelling support witness the sort of Sunderland display that dismissed Rochdale with some ease or the one that stuttered and stumbled at Burton? We’ll see.
There should have been an update to this series (see the archive links below for the earlier posts) at the start of the season but I travelled up early for the Charlton game, spending the Friday in Leeds before driving on to the North-East, then when I got back home I did a match report to complement Pete Sixsmith’s and didn’t have time for anything else.
This was followed by five games in two weeks, with no space to fit anything in, and here we are.
This means my last post in the series was the one that explained the role of Coventry City‘s fans in propelling their club up and Sunderland down in our poll and asked who should be the sixth team to join Coventry, Sunderland, Charlton, Barnsley and Portsmouth in our deliberations. Peterborough was the very clear preference from the four choices offered; they got more votes than the other three clubs (Southend, Plymouth and Luton) combined.
Those six will be the ones we start with, and I can’t imagine it changing before Christmas.
I have to say I found that barrage a bit strange. After all, when a blog adopts a title which includes the phrase “dodgy numbers”, and then ends with a disclaimer which states “the arithmetic’s correct, it’s just the rest could be a bit wonky” it’s best not to take it too seriously.
And when it says “unless new voter(s) decide to cast vote(s) for only one team and to throw rationality to the winds – and why not, it’s what football’s all about”, which is what I wrote in my last post, you might get some idea that we welcome other clubs’ fans and enjoy hearing from them.
UPDATE: we saw the poll had grown, improbably, to 11,000+ votes with Coventry way out in front on 26 per cent. Couldn’t blame Jimmy Hill this time but something was clearly up. For the culprits, go to the Coventry site Sky Blues Talk … but don’t get too cross as our lot would gladly have done the same to them. The poll, unsurprisingly, is suspended …
After Colin reposted our “who’s going up?” poll (on the left, below) in one of the Question and Answer sessions with our owners there was brief flurry of voting, as you might have expected given the number of visitors we had. And then things slowed down until, by the weekend, things were at a trickle, although votes were and are still coming in. Again, this was to be expected as the eyes of the football world were on Russia, where eight or nine ex-Sunderland players were taking part in the World’s most prestigious competition outside the Third Division. We now have over 800 votes cast, which is enough to be going on with, although Colin in his gut feeling poll, had almost as many when only one vote was allowed per person.
When I first put this poll up
, a mere week ago, I wrote
“this is predominantly a Sunderland site and we aren’t claiming results are totally unbiased… …Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that SAFC fans have not been blindly optimistic.”
After only a week I would not able to add a lot to this statement, were it not for two things. The first is that the poll was tagged to promote it to all League One fans for over 24 hours before it was promoted on our facebook page and then on Colin’s subsequent posts on this site. This gave us a small (very small, as it happens) hint of what the whole of the League One fanbase might think. The second was that Colin’s own poll closed, with some findings we can bring to bear on this one.
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.
At half time, Pete Sixsmith, custodian of the seven-word matchday verdicts that appear here as Sixer’s Sevens, was down to five words: ‘competent enough against modest opposition.’ After two misses, Emanuele Giaccherini had scored with a clinical half-volley from a fine Lee Cattermole cross. All the players celebrated, which Nick Barnes and Gary Bennett interpreted in positive terms on BBC Radio Newcastle as if to suggest they’d have been squabbling among themselves under PDC. After one or two moderately uncomfortable moments in the second half, but much more Sunderland pressure, Valentin Roberge headed home to put the game beyond Posh. Bravo Kevin Ball and, for an impressive game before he went off tired, Giaccherini. ‘Comfortable,’ said Benno. ‘Solid,’ said Sixer …
Whether the revolution is over or on hold, just waiting for a new leader, there’s business to be done.
Kevin Ball has passion and knowledge, commands respect and does his level best. No one could prepare players better than he’ll be doing for the third round Capital One cup game against Peterborough.
You’d want him on your side in the trenches, but he’d be an NCO, not a basic squaddie and you’d tend to do as he said. So no little player revolts, kindergarten tantrums, smuggled letters home telling of mental and physical cruelty.
Amid all this turmoil, there’s work to be done. It falls to Kevin Ball to drum up enthusiasm among the rebellious waifs and strays left behind by the PDC whirlwind. If anyone can do it, surely it’s Bally who somehow produced a home win, the only one of the season, as caretaker manager when we went down with 15 points. Robert Graves*, manager of the Peterborough United Supporters (PUSFC) team and a regular Posh voice on local radio, did the honours when we last met Peterborough United in a cup game (Jan 2012) and returned – before the PDC dismissal – with the mischievous suggestion that the wait for our next encounter will be shorter – next season in the Championship (though he’s surer about us going down than Posh being promoted). For that impertinence alone, he should have the smile wiped off his face by a 5-0 home win in tomorrow night’s Capital One cup third round tie …
Martin O’Neill said it:
It’s delightful to get the three points on the board as they are very important to us and it’s a great win for all of the fans who travelled down to watch us play.
We have given them something to cheer about on the way home.
