Premier League

France vs Portugal ‘Who are You?’: a SAFC supporter cries forcaportugal

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SAM
Our Sam on the right


Tomorrow: another SAFC season ticket holder – Véronique, a solidly French adopted Mackem – exudes passion for La Belle France …

Monsieur Salut writes: here’s a special treat from the tireless souls at Salut! Sunderland. Many readers enjoy the Who are You? series. Why not one for the Euro 2016 final?

Help was sought from miles around. Loads of friends of this site tried to dig up suitable candidates, a supporter of France and a supporter of Portugal.

And we ended up – I am delighted to say – with two Sunderland fans. Once Ronaldo and Griezmann had declined our offer (“reward in heaven guv, honest”), it could not have worked out better. Shout-outs are due to Kay and Steve, also Sunderland supporters, for putting me on the track of Sam Verissimo, home-and-away regular but also half-Portuguese.

So let’s start with Portugal, whose plodding route to the final has underwhelmed most neutrals. Sam describes himself at Twitter as ‘a born entertainer who apparently looks like Michael Mcintyre’ and has a SoL season ticket despite living in London. He fears the worst for his country on Sunday …

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The people have spoken: Hull, Burnley and Bournemouth to leave the union

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John McCormick:
John McCormick. Impartial, as always

Would you believe that some people, somewhere, think Man Utd  will be relegated? And that others say the axe will fall on Spurs, Chelsea, or Man City. Some even say Arsenal will go down.

That’s democracy for you, so please, please, no histrionics, vitriol or gratuitous insults. There have been enough of them these past few weeks and it’s time for civilised behaviour between gentlefolk, like we always get when discussing football.

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Fixture list: Newcastle gone, our nearest to a derby, Middlesbrough, comes early

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Jake: 'Ha'way Lads. Get stuck in for a brighter start'
Jake: ‘Ha’way Lads. Get stuck in for a brighter start’

Pete Sixsmith, quick off the mark, has already booked one must-do trip of recent seasons – if I say the last but one was a match of eight goals and we scored none of them, you’ll get the drift – and is raring to go. Here he casts an eye over the fixtures for 2016-17 (listed in full, though subject to changes, at https://safc.blog/2016/06/talk-about-tough-manchester-city-away-to-start-chelsea-away-to-finish/. Not a bad opening sequence, he reckons, though we’ve got to break with another recent tradition and get early points on the board …

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Relegation poll: Middlesbrough, Hull or Sunderland? Arsenal and Manchester Utd? Vote now

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John McCormick:
John McCormick. reading the past, looking to the future

I’m getting a bit tired of the title (and Monsieur Salut should apologise to any reader lured here by thoughts it was a poll on religion; the word inexplicably replaced relegation in the headline when published and still appeared some time later at the newsnow.co.uk site) .

But just because we have some decent players, led by one of the Premier League’s most experienced managers and backed by a tremendous crowd, we can’t assume we’re safe.

Our record is not good. We’ve been one of the survivors for too many seasons and we can’t take anything for granted. Even now there will be some fans somewhere rubbing their hands as they look at the fixtures and thinking ‘Sunderland, that’s an easy three points’.

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Relegation: it’s still Bournemouth and Watford. Can Leicester and Norwich relax?

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John McCormick:
John McCormick: I’m biased. Are you?

Strange, isn’t it? I spend Monday evening idly browsing the MLS (aka Major League Soccer) website trying to work out how it (the league, not the website) operates and then along comes David Millward with a piece about a football convention in the USA. I wonder if the fans he mixed with can get their heads around relegation and promotion better than I can handle the subtleties of the MLS.

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Relegation 2016: Bournemouth and Watford, Norwich or Leicester. Not Villa or Newcastle (or SAFC)

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John McCormick:
John McCormick: I’m biased. Are you?

Casual visitors to this site might might not be aware that at the start of last season I made a prediction about who would suffer relegation from the Premiership and then tracked those clubs (and SAFC, of course) over the season. At the end of my final post of the series I set up a poll to see who readers thought would be relegated at the end of the coming season.

With almost four hundred votes cast you might think the results bear scrutiny. But think again. The average PL attendance is 36,000. MOTD can attract over 4 million.  More than 26 million viewers watched FA Cup action on TV during last January. So a few hundred’s  really small beer, especially as each reader can have three votes.

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Brazil 2014. Robson reports in: that phenomenally good and bad Suarez

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John McCormick writes: Jeremy Robson has been busy lately but managed to catch up with the World Cup and pass on his thoughts. His considered appraisal of England’s performance and the reasons for it are well worth reading, be you fan, player, owner or member of the FA council. And, if you’re one of the latter, in the words of the one-year king, “something must be done”.

taking a detached view of events overseas
taking a detached view of events overseas


Few serious followers of the national team were under any illusions about our prospects at this year’s World Cup, Firstly, we rarely do well and secondly, this is possibly the weakest squad to go to a World Cup in living memory.

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