Steve Bruce

Salut!’s week: special Norwich, West Brom and Charlie Hurley edition

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The best of Salut! Sunderland‘s week – and often enough the worst – is summarised in this slot provided M Salut finds time do it. After what happened at Norwich, and in matters legal, it took one Baggie’s pre-match Q&A and another’s Charlie Hurley poem to make him find time this week …

Today, with all the stormwater that has swept under the bridge, a comprehensive review of what we’ve covered would be just too depressing.

If you want to read what Pete Sixsmith made of Norfolk before the match at Canary Road, that’s fine. Click here – Pete’s spirits were high at that point.

If you want to know what he thought of our performance, you must root around the site for yourselves. It would not be kind to post the link here, even though the piece was, as usual, well-written, intelligently argued and, in the circumstances, restrained.

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Bruce spot-on with Bramble; Bardsley needs a rocket too

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Is it a breach of Salut! Sunderland‘s policy of getting fully behind the Lads before matchday to support Steve Bruce’s comments on the Titus Bramble affair? I don’t think so.

Bramble has been suspended pending a club investigation into those aspects of the early-hours Yarm incident that concern club discipline. He therefore plays no part in the approach to West Brom at home tomorrow.

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‘Win or lose to West Brom, Bruce, your time’s up’

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Salut! Sunderland does not believe in kicking a man when he’s down. Neither Pete Sixsmith nor Colin Randall, who broadly cobble this thing together, has so far joined the crowds gathering in the Tuileries to knit as Madame Guillotine does her work. One more bad result and that could well change. Others are made of hardier stuff; one more bad result would already be too late for our regular contributor and confirmed tricoteur, Jeremy Robson …


Those of us over a certain age have lost count of the relegation battles fought and lost as well as a few that we managed to win to avoid the dreaded drop.

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Soapbox: knocked about in Norwich, a Russian proverb for Bruce

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If you have come here looking for rays of hope, an upbeat prediction of brighter times ahead, turn away now. After watching the team that destroyed Stoke fail with a whimper at Carrow Road, Pete Sixsmith despairs of our version of Premier League football …

Our last three away games have been against clubs who have recently been playing in the third tier of English football. We have failed to win any of them.

All three (Swansea, Brighton and Norwich) are managed by bright, imaginative young managers who clearly think very deeply about the game and get the maximum out of relatively limited players.

If we look at last night’s game ( and believe me, I don’t want to see any of it ever again|), we had a fluid and flexible Norwich City, managed by the up and coming Paul Lambert, against a plodding and predictable Sunderland side, managed by Steve Bruce, a man who may well be heading for a lengthy spell on the golf course.

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Bruce’s Banter: but was it just possession we surrendered, Steve?

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Crisis, what crisis? That was the question after Stoke. But one game on, we’re back to where we were, unable to muster a proper fight against a promoted team and probably fortunate to be beaten only 2-1. It felt like a wretched, wholesale surrender. Against this unattractive backdrop, Steve Bruce had to come up with something for his post-match e-mail …

Dear Colin,

We didn’t play well enough. We played well for the first 10 minutes or so, but the night was littered with mistakes.

We surrendered possession too easily and gave the ball back to them too quickly for me.

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Soapbox: how the Norwich build-up included a 5-0 away win

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With abject apologies to those who followed the link earlier and reached a dead end – we are still trying to work out who to blame. This is the Pete Sixsmith travelogue-cum-match preview. Lots about Norfolk, and a little about football, as Pete attempts to make all working people envious of his mixture of football, travel, culture and, um, the Barron Knights in a prelude to Sunderland’s return tonight to Premier League action …

Maybe I have already mentioned this, but I am no longer “at work”.

Forgive me for repeating it, but it does give ample opportunity for watching football, including tonight’s clash at Carrow Road.

Not for me a whole day on a coach, arriving back bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed and off to work a couple of hours later. Instead, I set off on Saturday for a short break in a county that I thoroughly enjoyed on my last visit two years ago and which seems to improve with time.

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Salut! Sunderlands week: stuffing Stoke, cheering up Reidy, facing Norwich

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The long break between games made it a quietish week, but there is still plenty to look back on if you missed a daily dose of Salut! Sunderland …

It was good to have an upbeat Bruce’s Banter, the e-mail Steve Bruce sends out after each game. Click here to see what he had to say about the 4-0 win against Stoke City. He mentioned some big individual performances but stopped short of naming names.

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From Sunderland to Plymouth: a tale of two managers

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Courtesy: A Love Supreme

Steve Bruce had every right to rub the noses of media pundits in the mess of Stoke City’s collapse at the Stadium of Light.

Football, as Plymouth Argyle said in a club statement justifying the sacking of one of Bruce’s Sunderland predecessors, Peter Reid, is a results business.

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Salut!’s week: betrayed by Gyan, floored by Chelsea. Ready for Stoke?

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Well, we certainly hope we’re ready for Stoke. Last season, they came to the Stadium of Light after the mauling at Newcastle left Steve Bruce in need of a quick bounceback. He got one, courtesy of two Cashamoah £yan goals and the ref’s poor eyesight. How much more urgent is the need for a win tomorrow? Salut! Sunderland summarises a busy, unhappy (for us) week with plenty, too, to interest Chelsea and Stoke supporters …

The ink had hardly dried on last week’s review of the week before the inkwell was well and truly knocked over. Hours before the kickoff of Sunderland v Chelsea, we were hit with news of the loan deal taking Asamoah Gyan to the United Arab Emirates.

Somehow this turned a match in which I feared we’d struggle into an away banker, even though Gyan would not have played in any case because of injury. It was something to do with what the news told me about the spirit within the camp and, perhaps, the club’s own view of the big picture.

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