Biggest in history – and you see Jake wondering about that above – it may or may not be, but we do know rather a lot rides on Newcastle United v Sunderland.
Two of the three sides battling for the one obvious position of safety meet with all the baggage of not only a nerve-shredding relegation scrap but a long tradition of enmity and rivalry given the added spice of opposing managers who, shall we say, have not always got along too well.
Margaret Byrne has resigned as chief executive of Sunderland AFC in recognition of her flawed handling of the Adam Johnson affair.
When Johnson’s trial ended with a further conviction, on top of the Guilty pleas already entered, and with it the likelihood of a significant jail term, we reproduced SAFC’s statement and called it a “dignified response”. As far as it went, that was an accurate description. No one should be pre-judged; every accused person is entitled under our civilised procedures to the presumption of innocence until proved otherwise.
Pete Sixsmith doesn’t yet know the full detail of the fevered response from the Potteries to his tongue-in-cheek “I love Stoke City” piece. He’s been too busy enjoying a trip to the south coast and points west. His early spring break came agonisingly close to achieving perfection, Jermain Defoe’s goal seeming enough to secure three precious points only for the best move of the game to produce an equaliser deep into stoppage time, even after Big Sam tried to bolster the defence by sending on John O’Shea for the last few minutes. Come back for Sixer’s longer account of the match, which will land as soon as his travels allow …
The atmosphere at the Stadium of Light as Sunderland pressed for the equaliser against Crystal Palace, which Fabio Borini finally supplied in style, got Paul Summerside thinking.
Call it positive thinking, or plain old clutching at straws over post-match pints at the Avenue, but he reckons we are more fired up as a side in evening games, especially at home and when – as is usually the case as a season draws to a close – there’s a lot to play for. There’s one such game to come in the run-in -the still-to-be-rescheduled Everton home game – but Paul senses, maybe, more to come. He also takes heart from the competing priorities of some of the teams we’re still to play …
Let’s be honest. We love Stoke City for beating the Mags this week, allowing us to start the weekend out of the bottom three. We haven’t always loved them. It had something to do with the way Stoke seemed to cling on to the hooligan age longer than most, the muscular nature of Tony Pulis’s approach to goalmouth tactics (at either end) and the neanderthal hounding of Aaron Ramsey. But Salut! Sunderland has broadly enjoyed excellent rapport with Stoke fans willing to answer our Who are You? questions and, lo and behold, City are all of a sudden a decent side playing good, winning football.
Pete Sixsmith was brilliant on BBC Radio Newcastle this week, hailing the virtues of Stoke and saying, more or less, how nice it must be to wake up as a Stoke supporter instead of enduring SAFC’S annual assault on our collective blood pressure. Here he explains why …
Tom Williams* answered the call at Twitter for a Saints fan to do the honours ahead of Saturday’s match. We …
[polldaddy poll=9330731]
Rob Hutchison’s one-word, one-mark verdicts after the draw against Palace had this for our right back: “Yedlin 7 enduring.”
In my ESPN FC match reflections, I also gave DeAndre 7/10 and this made him my man of the match for us (Rob had him joint first with Borini; ESPN’s style is not to award a rating to players used after 70 minutes).
We know we had to win against Crystal Palace and didn’t. We know we needed at least a point at West Ham and threw all three away.
Now even Big Sam’s meagre target of four from three games depends on a frankly improbable win at St Mary’s.
Big Sam told BT Sport’s Football Tonight show he’d celebrate Sunderland survival with ‘a very nice holiday in Spain and a few bottles of champagne’. We can safely assume he can afford champagne that will keep in the cellar until promotion next year. This was a game we knew we had to win; the scraped draw makes it a lot less likely we’ll be celebrating come May.
On the basis of a grim second-half performance that allowed Connor Wickham to do what he rarely did for us, score twice or at all, we were lucky to grab even a point. Fabio Borini’s equaliser came from nothing. It was a fabulous strike, speculative or not, with time running out. But unless we surprise everyone by producing a mightier team performance than this at Southampton, it’s looking bleak. Pete Sixsmith, excellent on BBC Radio Newcastle in the pre-match buildup, will be back with more; this is his seven-word instant verdict … Pete Sixsmith
Staying in is for wimps, at least when there’s a competitive football match to see. Pete Sixmsith took in the Under 21s, hosting Leicester City with a debut for the experience but currently unattached trialist Emmanuel Eboué. the Ivoiran right-back did OK until subbed but Sixer witnessed just the kind of result we do not want repeated tonight …
