Sunderland vs Scunthorpe United prize Guess the Score: more goals for Maja?

Jake: ‘you need a long memory’

The congestion of this week and next – with games tonight, Sunday and next Wednesday – means there’ll be an awful lot to fit in over the coming days.

So apologies for Guess the Score for SAFC vs Scunthorpe appearing now. The same applied to the Scunny “Who are You?”. At least there’ll be plenty to read between now and this time next week. We can but hope it will all be positive.

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Scunthorpe United Who are You? Magical Beagrie, woeful refs, Sunderland revival prospects

Matt Blanchard, right, with Neal Bishop, a former Scunthorpe player whose wife Frances made it to the last three of a series of The Apprentice

Monsieur Salut writes: this edition of Who are You? appears out of sequence, with a league cup game to be played tonight at home to Sheffield Wednesday, and Guess the Score will also look out of place when posted later (but before tonight’s game). our Scunthorpe United volunteer, Matt Blanchard*, the editor of  Iron-Bru.co.uk, reckons well over 1,000 Scunny fans will make the trip north to the Stadium of Light for Sunday’s game, in theory one SAFC ought to win though Matt – who will be there – believes a 2-2 draw is on the cards …

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Burton, Scunthorpe or Peterborough – who’ll join Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton and Portsmouth?

UPDATE: we saw the poll had grown, improbably, to 11,000+ votes with Coventry way out in front on 26 per cent. Couldn’t blame Jimmy Hill this time but something was clearly up.  For the culprits, go to the Coventry site Sky Blues Talk    … but don’t get too cross as our lot would gladly have done the same to them. The poll, unsurprisingly, is suspended …

After Colin reposted our “who’s going up?” poll (on the left, below) in one of the Question and Answer sessions  with our owners there  was brief flurry of voting, as you might have expected given the number of visitors we had. And then things slowed down until, by the weekend, things were at a trickle, although votes were and are still coming in. Again, this was to be expected as the eyes of the football world were on Russia, where eight or nine ex-Sunderland players were taking part in the World’s most prestigious competition outside the Third Division. We now have over 800 votes cast, which is enough to be going on with, although Colin in his gut feeling poll, had almost as many when only one vote was allowed per person.

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Barnsley drop, Burton and Posh replace Luton and Scunthorpe, Walsall get off the bottom in our promotion poll.

When I first put this poll up, a mere week ago, I wrote

“this is predominantly a Sunderland site and we aren’t claiming results are totally unbiased… …Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to say that SAFC  fans have not been blindly optimistic.”

After only a week I would not able to add a lot to this statement, were it not for two things. The first is that the poll was tagged to promote it to all League One fans for over 24 hours before it was promoted on our facebook page and then on Colin’s subsequent posts on this site. This gave us a small (very small, as it happens) hint of what the whole of the League One fanbase might think. The second was that Colin’s own poll closed, with some findings we can bring to bear on this one.

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The bookies say Sunderland, Barnsley, Charlton, Portsmouth, Luton and Scunthorpe. What about you?

And so we have it: the fixtures are out. You’ll be getting your fill of dates, and conjecture from all over, no doubt, and enjoying the pre-season buzz of anticipation that it brings.

But when you’re tucked up under the sheets, reading Charles Buchan’s “Football Monthly” with a torch and reality bites, do you think you’ll win League One?

Or even get promoted?

If you do, please let us know. If you don’t, let us know who you think will make the grade.

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Lens absent as Sunderland manage only a draw at Scunthorpe

Jake: ‘will I recognise anyone when we play Derby?’

Pete Sixsmith was at Glanford Park for Scunthorpe United 0-0 Sunderland. “As inspiring as an Ed Sheeran album” was his slightly harsh (but on whom?) seven-word verdict.

What matters was not so much one pre-season performance as the arrival of more new players and the absence of another.

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