Wolves, Sheffield United, Cardiff and Bristol City keep out Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday and Fulham (and don’t mention Sunderland)

The last time I reported in, Leeds were the only club from our readers’ pre-season choices to be in the top six positions. The other five – Cardiff, Wolves, Sheffield United, Bristol City and Preston, in that order – had together accumulated only 617 votes, about 7.5% of the total cast, and Wolves had had over half of them.

Four of our choices, it must be said, were queuing up on the boundary, ready to pounce on any slips from the leaders, and only one was languishing (with great languor) in the doldrums. That was just over a month ago, in which time there have been five games, potentially fifteen points, to contest.

With the arrival of another international weekend we have a chance to review the situation and see if the natural order  (as defined by our readership) has been restored in those five games.

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Sixer’s stand-in’s Soapbox. Preston: nice kegs, shame about the slow train

Sixer and his stand-in on a faster train

Lime Street closed for three weeks on the day we played Preston and I suspect some of the direct trains that might have departed from there were surreptitiously removed from schedules in the months preceding. How else would I have found easy passage from Liverpool to Preston when mooching around in the relegation-threatened PDC days, and even when this season’s fixtures were announced, but nothing when trying to get there this weekend?

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Sixer’s Sevens: Preston North End 2-2 Sunderland. Point gained or two lost?

Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

Monsieur Salut writes: before the game, I was wondering – controversially, I know – whether there was more chance of identifying a believable character or storyline twist in Line of Duty (sorry, I’m catching up late on this well-acted, gripping hokum) than of finding reason for belief in Simon Grayson and the Lads. Then we led at Deepdale, came back after going behind and secured a valuable, morale-boosting away point.

Pete Sixsmith decided to give Deepdale a miss, less in protest at the incompetence he has witnessed week after week than because Shildon had an FA Cup tie at Banbury (and saw our adopted home town win 3-2). He handed the baton to our associate editor John McCormick, whose seven-word verdict appears below. John had a much better outing than his last one, to Goodison, and enjoyed his afternoon. BBC’s Radio Newcastle pundit Gary Bennett expressed disbelief after the match that the referee had given nothing when the PNE keeper beat a returning Duncan Watmore to the ball but outside the box and with his arm – but yet again we couldn’t hold on to a lead and keep a clean sheet. Benno made John O’Shea his star SAFC man and said something along these lines: ‘I know it’s only a point but that was 100 per cent better than what we’ve been seeing’ …

 

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground: Preston North End’s Deepdale

Sleek Sixer now …

Now we’re getting into it, or at least Pete Sixsmith is. True, proper history. His journey through the football grounds of England brings us to memories of the era when Blackburn Rovers were admitted to the Football League instead of cup-winning-toff-defeating, working-class Blackburn Olympic, who subsequently folded, the first penalty kick was yet to be taken, and one of the founder members of the Football League and twice recent Champions were about to be upset by some upstarts from even further north. Pete wasn’t there, of course. That took another 80 years. Let’s read on and find out how his visit went:

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Preston North End vs SAFC Guess the Score: the deep end at Deepdale

Another chance to win a prize – and at last the mugs of previous winners are about to hit the road

What is left to say? Another game, another sense of trepidation or, if Pete Sixsmith was right in his clinical assessment of our plight after his bleak evening at Portman Road, another reason to be “largely past caring”.

Preston North End vs Sunderland. Fifth top vs second bottom. It seems beyond belief, whatever the level of pessimism that our deputy editor Malcolm Dawson and others experienced in the summer.

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Preston North End Who are You?: ‘Grayson thought he was stepping up’

Mark Collard: ‘a friend took this from Sky coverage of the Colchester game I mention in my answers. I am the baldy man with glasses and the moment captured is when Colchester were about to take a penalty but it sums up the day’

And now, Simon Grayson and Sunderland’s search for a point or three, as opposed to a search for a point even lower than reached so far, goes on Saturday to Deepdale, the famous old ground of the equally famous Preston North End with its Bill Shankly, Sir Tom Finney and Alan Kelly stands.

Mark Collard*, our PNE ‘Who are You?’ volunteer, was found at Twitter via Monsieur Salut’s electronic acquaintanceship with the singer and writer Maggie Holland. Mark, whose Twitter profile reads ‘archaeologist. director at Rubicon Heritage Services. PNEFC fan’, welcomes the newly positive Preston style under Alex Neill ‘after the tedium of a lot of the games under Grayson’. He sees our misery continuing with another defeat for the former PNE boss …

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FA Cup Third Round: five good, five bad. Everton, Notts County make both lists

Bobby Kerr and the FA Cup, May 5 1973, from Art of Football

… in which Pete Sixsmith looks back on the good, bad and exceedingly ugly FA Cup 3rd Round ties he remembers with affection or disgust …

Excitement levels among Sunderland supporters, it has to be said, have not been high over the impending FA Cup tie with Burnley.

I have my ticket due to the Cup Ticket option but am considering missing out in order to watch a tasty FA Vase tie between Shildon and Atherton Collieries. But it did get me thinking about epic and disastrous third round clashes in the past.

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No-go zone tips for Bruce as Sunderland see off Preston


So a Sunderland team can score goals, more than they concede, and reach a cup final. Salut! Sunderland promised to think positively in the approach to Bolton away, and we’re true to our word, offering a big bravo to Keith Bertschin and his team for this scoreline in the ToteSport Cup semi-final:


Sunderland Res 5 Preston North End Res 3

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Man Utd, Preston and the Ferguson dynasty: wrong and right

UEFA Champions LeagueImage: tpower1978

The TalkSport site has been having some fun recalling the various times Sir Alex Ferguson – that’s him, gagged, in the image above – has blown his top. The research may well have taken years, so copious is the archive.

Why did they bother? Ah, then you haven’t heard that the Manchester United boss has – TalkSport’s words – “reacted angrily to the sacking of son Darren at Preston by demanding the return of three of his Man United players from their loan spells at Deepdale”.

Hardly the most important talking point of the year just ending, but interesting all the same. And Salut! Sunderland – or, since this is a democracy, one part of it – is instinctively on SAF’s side.

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