Queens Park Rangers
Revitalise the Premier: expand Chelsea, Manchester, Arsenal hierarchy, send bottom six down
Ordinary Jon, aka Jon Adamson, Sunderland supporter and football blogger******, was bored rigid by the vaunted Premier League last season. Even our customary great escape left him feeling there’d been only two or three SAFC games worth remembering and that ours wasn’t even the great escape anyway. His recipe for making life at the top more exciting, and life at the bottom more troublesome, follows. It will suit some appetites, it may cause acute indigestion and it could be too tongue-in-cheek to win votes on Come Dine With Me. Bland fare it is not …
The dullest season since the Premier League began suggests radical action is required. Here’s a five point plan to bring some excitement back into the beautiful product.
Masochism (3): Sixer mounts his Soapbox to denounce QPR shambles
” class=”size-medium wp-image-59196″ /> Jake: ‘when a man’s tired of Sunderland …;Sunderland AFC please take note. If as loyal and long-standing and (sitting) a fan as Pete Sixsmith is beginning to cry ‘enough is enough’, something’s up. This is how Sixer saw the rotten collective surrender to QPR, complete with a literary allusion to ‘lives of quiet desperation’. Go to the home page – salutsunderland.com and navigate your way to the earlier Masochism pieces – …
Masochism (2): Sunderland’s player ratings vs QPR. ‘Worse than Norwich away’
If you thought Rob Hutchison was harsh with his one-word verdicts and low player ratings after the shambles of last night, prepare to reconsider. Rob was positively benign compared with Keir Bradwell, who cannot bring himself to award higher than an average of 3/10 for the starting 11.
Keir uses that infamous defeat at Norwich City last season as the benchmark for Sunderland awfulness. I am sure we can all come up with other contenders (including a few from this season, Southampton (a), Fulham (h) among them).
Masochism (1): Sunderland’s players ratings – but who was ‘phenomenal’ for QPR?
Prepare for more pain. The beatings will continue until morale improves. After a night when Sunderland collectively expressed a Premier status death wish or – if you prefer – gave a new definition to the notion of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, we have the customary sets of player ratings. First up is Rob Hutchison, with his quirky one-worders and marks averaging 5 out of 10 for the starting line-up. Keir Bradwell’s wordier condemnation is at https://safc.blog/2015/02/masochism-2-sunderlands-player-ratings-vs-qpr-worse-than-norwich-away/ …
Sixer’s Sevens: SAFC 0 QPR 2. An utter disgrace
At half time, we were two down and poor old Pete Sixsmith already had a seven-word verdict: ‘Abysmal from the first minute. Utterly hopeless’. If that seems like sitting on the fence, there was little more than some blustering huff and puff to come. Pete had known at the interval, most of us had known, it would not get too much better. Never mind that Martin Atkinson’s interpretation of the handball rule left the impression defenders could stop, pick up the ball and still get away with it. Rob Green made his saves, but keepers do. We simply deserved no more than this wretched defeat. I shall not be staying up for Gus Poyet’s explanation for the exposed left flank that led to both QPR goals. As Nick Barnes said on BBC Radio Newcastle. Sunderland remains happy hunting ground for ‘the striker who cannot score (Zamora), the team that cannot win (QPR)’…
Fabio Borini: Liverpool, Sunderland, QPR … the authorised version
Read this article from @Knox_Harrington ! He red my mind! Thank you…
— fabio borini (@borinifabio29) September 3, 2014
The world and his dog have a view on the Fabio Borini affair. My own is well known: he is not paid to be a Sunderland supporter but for being a professional footballer, and must be allowed to
make his own choices, but I do bitterly regret all the wasted effort to bring him back when it was clear all along he’d sooner take a break from active football. Even those Sunderland supporters who profess not to care too much that this, indeed, is the outcome express a view merely by saying just that. What of Borini himself? And Liverpool fans? It is likely we still know only part of the story of how he now comes to be kicking his heels at Anfield with, apparently, little real prospect of breaking into the team on Brendan Rodgers’s present thinking.Well, Borini read the article we reproduce today from the excellently written Liverpool fan site The Anfied Wrap and gave it the seal of approval you see above. So step forward the author, Neil Atkinson, from whom we have heard before, with an introduction followed, with his consent, by the piece itself …
Sixer’s QPR Soapbox: Sunderland slip up as Cattermole made to tread egg shells
Pete Sixsmith‘s wisest decision on Saturday was his choice of pub, the trick being to beat the ploddish Met Police anti-supporter radar, get a good pint and not still have miles to make up to reach the ground. Notting Hill Gate, the Commissioner will doubtless be surprised and relieved to hear, survived the visit from a dozen or more Sunderland fans. Then it was time to head on to White City and the day went downhill, as Pete describes …
QPR Who are You?: SAFC fans ‘don’t age well, but Joey does’
Kieran Robinson – check him out at kieranrobinson.com – was recommended to us as a QPR candidate for ‘Who are You?’ by Steve Colwell, a great friend this site who is not only a Rangers fanatic but at least twice an occupant of this little hot seat. He reports on the Old Bill’s heavy-handed (sorry Met Police: the phrase slips effortlessly off the keyboard) denial of pre-match pint opportunities, the premature ageing of Sunderland supporters and the leadership qualities of Joey Barton …
QPR vs SAFC ‘Guess the Score’: no beer, no prize
Can two sets of supporters, from good, decent football clubs, be trusted to share the same licensed premises with a couple of coppers on hand to nip any nonsense in the bud?
The answer from the Met is No. So make sure to get your pre-match pints in Kings Cross or elsewhere. Shepherds Bush may prove a desert. One or two publicans may welcome you but don’t bet on it.