Around this time of every year, there are certainties we take for granted. The calendar will tell us it is October, trees shed leaves, shops advertise Christmas as if it’s only next week and Sunderland supporters still await a first win of the season.
We generally don’t draw too much comfort for we have actually won twice, because there is something distinctly hollow about beating lower league opposition in the League Cup when you can barely pick up a draw in the Premier League.
Malcolm Dawson writes……For some reason I found it hard to get fully involved in this game yesterday and my attention …
Monsieur Salut writes: the review section of the UAE newspaper I write for, The National, has a feature they call The Long Read. I’ve done it a couple of times – from the Jungle in Calais and on Muslim writers threatened by fanatics for having a progressive instead of medieval outlook. It came to mind when I was posting Andrew Caulton’s ‘Who are you?’ interview. A passionate West Bromwich Albion fan exiled in the USA, Andrew goes on a bit, but then so do my questions. And I found his replies engrossing.
As a postscript, I reminded him he had promised a photo showing his brother and Paolo Di Canio at the infamous WBA v SAFC game that was to be PDC’s last in charge. He searched high and low for that picture now and it has now been been added to this follow-up …
Monsieur Salut writes: Every few months, a satellite US radio station Sirius XM, asks me onto a late show (late for me) to talk about the latest woes afflicting Sunderland. That is where Andrew Caulton*, an Englishman in New Hampshire with fingers in lots of football pies, heard me (twice). We met again at Twitter, where he revealed his lifelong West Brom allegiance and readily agreed to sit in the ‘Who are You?’ hot seat. His recollections of the 1973 cup run and of coaching Calum Davenport, who played for us on loan, are priceless.It is another long read but Andrew seems the sort of bloke you could happily natter with for hours in the pub …
Monsieur Salut writes: Despite far too many decades as a journalist (three of them with The Daily Telegraph), I have serious misgivings about sting operations. They may sometimes uncover genuine malpractice but, among a number of concerns, I wonder who polices the stinger, in this case the Telegraph. This newspaper has after all spent several years getting rid of the sort of seasoned, sensible and in many case outstandingly good journalists who might have been trusted with such a role. For some reason, it makes me think of speed cops hiding behind bushes, as happens in France. It’s, well, just not British.
That said, Sam Allardyce has been a very foolish man. Pete Sixsmith takes up the story and offers scant sympathy …
Hands up anyone who is looking forward to Saturday.
In fact, there’ll be plenty. Support, loyalty, passion often transcend the lack of serious expectation. David Moyes and his team have made an abysmal start to the season, the sort that gets managers sacked in panic reaction from owners.
Anyone who watched the otherwise one-to-forget Everton match on the TV, and plenty of those inside the stadium, will have had their hearts warmed by the sight of little Bradley Lowery, the SAFC mascot for the game.
Bradley is fighting a form of cancer called neuroblastoma and needs costly treatment in the USA. A good piece about the way sporting and other personalities, from Jordan Henderson to Katie Price, who have rallied to the cause appears at the Sunderland Echo site, this link
When Jermain Defoe put us ahead, we were surprised given the run of play. When some decent second half pressure led to his second, superbly finished goal, we saw the heaven that is four post storm six games. After the utterly wretched defending that turned the 2-0 lead into a 3-2 defeat, you can expect Pete Sixsmith to be harsh about what happened next when he delivers his considered verdict. Here’s his traditional seven-worder …
Malcolm Dawson writes……man of few words Rob Hutchison (he of the one word player ratings) is becoming more garrulous these …
Colin Randall writes: Our Crystal Palace interviewee, my badminton-playing friend Keith Marriage*, ‘got it in the neck’ from Mrs M for spending too long on replies to our questions and not doing the washing up. But there appears no risk of the Marriages consciously uncoupling (how could they with that name?) and Keith reckons it was a ‘fun exercise’.
As afterthoughts, he wondered whether David Moyes is still shell-shocked after his Old Trafford experience and has ‘lost his managerial mojo’ and declared that Sunderland way outshone Spurs, ‘sadly just in the garish kit stakes’. It’s a long read but includes some fascinating insights …