Wycombe, Oxford, Coventry and Fleetwood intrude. But what about Peterborough, Rotherham, Doncaster and Portsmouth?

Another international weekend with Sunderland players called up. You might wonder how, given that we’re a League One club and we can barely  score, never mind keep a clean sheet. But let’s be thankful for small mercies, not only does it give the players a weekend without conceding, it also gives me a chance to bring us up to date before Pete Sixsmith starts a new series (I won’t tell you what it is but I will assure you of its quality) that will take us to Christmas and the site’s wind-down.

For my part, I’ll be keeping things brief. I still have neuropathy following my treatment (follow the link to find out what I’m on about)  and it’s likely to last a lot longer. Typing isn’t easy and creating and manipulating graphs takes forever, which explains why this lot aren’t a uniform size.

Still, things could be worse, I’ve now had two all-clear blood tests and we are still within spitting distance of the playoffs, as you will see below:

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Sunderland’s lengthening list of promotion rivals: Ipswich, plus Rotherham, Peterborough, Portsmouth and Doncaster (or Wycombe, Fleetwood, Blackpool and Coventry)

Another weekend without football, another weekend providing space to keep our readers – and pundits – up to date with our chosen clubs. If you think as far back as the start of the season you’ll probably recall six clubs being selected by our readership as the most likely to finish in the top six slots come the end of the season.

Sunderland made the cut but would have been selected regardless. The other five clubs were Ipswich Town, Rotherham, Peterborough Portsmouth and Doncaster. Ipswich apart, they haven’t done as well as expected. In fact, they haven’t done as well as Sunderland who, as the first two graphs show, haven’t done as well as they did last season

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Sixer’s sevens: Portsmouth make it heavy at the Stadium of Light

John McCormick writes: Let’s not quibble. We were not good. However, we had enough character to come back from a poor goal against a team that will feature at the end of the season and that must bode well,  for morale as much as for League position. Such wins are not to be sniffed at and I’m sure the crowd will have gone home happy.

We’ll find out tomorrow whether that can be said of our men at the match, when we get a full report. At the moment I don’t know if Malcolm or Pete will supply it. I do know Pete’s immediate post-game feelings, courtesy of a seven word text that winged its way south as the final whistle blew:

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Did beating Sunderland at Wembley compensate for not going up? Portsmouth views invited

Jake: ‘a big one’

NB: the official web address of Salut! Sunderland is now https://safc.blog for those who like to bookmark the site. Using https instead of http should eliminate the annoying ‘site not secure’ warnings and, worse, re-direction to a dodgy Turkish site …

Our usual pre-match buildup has been disrupted by a technical issue, now resolved. This was how we invited Pompey fans to take part in our lazy new version of the traditional Who are You? series. Apologies to readers who found a way here despite our problems and have already seen what follows …

Playing the same team five times in one season, in the case of away trips as far away as is possible without falling into the sea, should be like one of those long trials after which 12 good men (and/or women) and true are excused further jury duties for life.

But no, Sunderland must face Portsmouth at least twice season, starting with Saturday’s early kickoff and not in the league we both fancied ourselves playing.

Salut! Sunderland has run a Who are You? series for most of its 12 years of existence. It has yielded superb interviews with followers of opposing clubs, whether celebrities, churchmen, writers, politicians. broadcasters, former players and managers or “ordinary” fans.

But setting up interviews is hard graft and this season, we are posting a shorter list of questions here and inviting supporters to answer as many of them as they wish.

If the quality of the answers we received for the Ipswich Town game is maintained, we will keep the annual Haway (Highly Articulate Who are You?) awards going. If the response is more like readers saw for the Oxford and Accrington games, our kind prize sponsors will not be troubled next May.

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Sunderland vs Portsmouth: familiar friends, or not quite? Guess the Score

Jake: ‘a big one’

A technical fault means our headlines are not currently being picked up by NewsNow. This will seriously affect readership levels and it will be a struggle to attract Pompey fans to answer the questions below. So the Who are You? exercise is combined with Guess the Score – just for fun because the fault is proving very expensive to fix.

Playing the same team five times in one season, in the case of away trips as far away as is possible without falling into the sea, should be like one of those long trials after which 12 good men (and/or women) and true are excused further jury duties for life.

But no, Sunderland must face Portsmouth at least twice season, starting with Saturday’s early kickoff and not in the league we both fancied ourselves playing.

This posting is aimed in particular at Pompey supporters. Salut! Sunderland has run a Who are You? series for most of its 12 years of existence. It has yielded superb interviews with followers of opposing clubs, whether celebrities, churchmen, writers, politicians. broadcasters, former players and managers or “ordinary” fans.

But setting up interviews is hard graft and this season, we are posting a shorter list of questions here and inviting supporters to answer as many of them as they wish.

If the quality of the answers we received for the Ipswich Town game is maintained, we will keep the annual Haway (Highly Articulate Who are You?) awards going. If the response is more like readers saw for the Oxford and Accrington games, our kind prize sponsors will not be troubled next May.

And while you are here, Guess the Score. Just for fun.

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Accrington Stanley vs Sunderland: victory would boost confidence for the Pompey test

Jake: ‘Pkmoey’s the bigger game, but a win here would be nice’

The invitation to supporters of our Carabao Cup opponents, Accrington Stanley, to answer a few questions from Salut! Sunderland has received more or less the response we might have expected.

Not one of the hardy souls who follow “the club that wouldn’t die” has taken us up on the offer.

The questions are repeated below in case there is more enthusiasm with the game being that much closer. There isn’t much to update; Stanley’s first home game of the season was suspended because of the continuing crisis at the intended opponents, Bury, so they remain pointless.

Another invitation – to supporters of Sunderland and Ipswich to predict the outcome of Saturday’s game at Portman Road fared better.

The absence of a prize did not deter readers and the posting attracted a healthy 18 responses, though not all were entries. David Miller correctly forecast 1-1 and is probably cursing Salut! Sunderland for making it a prizeless edition.

Let’s have another go, once again for fun. Do we care too much about a league cup game? Well, clearly not as much we care about Saturday’s tough league match at home to Portsmouth, who beat us twice last season as we played each other five times (including the Checkatrade final and the play-off semis). But for those of us who want Sunderland to win every game, a strong and successful performance at the tiny Wham stadium would be welcome – and do no harm to confidence after our less than resounding start to the season.

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Sunderland, Portsmouth, Ipswich, Peterborough, Rotherham and Doncaster – the League One top six?

John McCormick,  writes: our ‘who to follow’ poll remained quiet, although the trickle of votes that came in over the last week did result in some changes. Sunderland and Portsmouth are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Ipswich, Rotherham and Peterborough. Then come Doncaster, who edged ahead of Coventry, followed at a distance by Lincoln and Burton.

I did expect Blackpool to do better but our site appears to have attracted few of their fans. Their season tickets had reached 4,818, when I last checked, so there’s obviously life returning to this once-troubled club. That’s about twice the number sold by Coventry, whose own troubles are nowhere being resolved and who slipped out of our top six after Doncaster Rovers gained a few votes. A third troubled club, Bolton Wanderers, who might or might not be sold by the time this post goes live, also didn’t do too badly and finished in the top half of the table. I don’t know how they’ll do that with only 7 first team players but what do I know about football?

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Promotion poll: Sunderland vie with Portsmouth but can Burton, Lincoln or Doncaster make top six?

John McCormick, associate editor, writes: things have quietened down with our ‘who to follow’ poll, as we might expect. Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Rotherham and Peterborough. Then comes Coventry, followed at a distance by Donny, Lincoln and Burton.

That’s interesting because on Wednesday over at  Roker Report, Nick Barnes, who knows more about football than I ever will,  identified Lincoln and Burton as teams that could mount a challenge to Sunderland, along with Ipswich, Portsmouth, Peterborough and Coventry. He didn’t mention Rotherham.

I could extend our watch list to eight clubs, even nine on the grounds that Donny are ahead of Lincoln and Burton in our poll, and I have added clubs during the season – Luton last season being the most recent – but it makes graphics difficult to follow. So I’m going to stick with six.

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Portsmouth then Sunderland, Ipswich, Rotherham, Peterborough and Coventry top our poll. But where are Lincoln?

On Friday we had over 3,000 visitors, followed by a quiet weekend. Not everyone took part in our top six poll  but over 1200 votes (not voters) have now been cast. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a League One fans’ site but I am expecting a few more will chip in before the season kicks off.

Early results suggest the headline I used then – for which I visited a couple of betting sites to find the promotion favourites – was on the right lines. Of the six clubs I named five are in the top spots. Lincoln (currently lingering in 8th place) are the exception with Sunderland, unsurprisingly, replacing them. There’s a gap – slight but quite evident – between the top three and the next three,  after which numbers drop off, so Lincoln and Doncaster, who made last season’s playoffs and now lie seventh, have quite a bit of ground to make up.

All of the clubs in the League received votes, which I’m taking to signify that we  managed a wide reach. It will be interesting to see if enough fans of so-called smaller clubs, which are predominantly towards the bottom of the poll, visit in large enough numbers to move their favourites upwards. Crowdwise, numbers are against them but we have only small numbers voting so you never know.

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