As the laborious and uninspiringly low-profile search for a new manager goes on, Sunderland return to Championship action with only a month left of the year since we last won at home.
Can we finally get three points at the Stadium of Light without needing three games to do so? Will Ellis Short accuse the media of making it up if we don’t?
Managerless and bottom of the league, we need distraction. The poll provided one. Monsieur Salut brings news of the results so far …
‘I remember thinking how curious it was to see all these ancient buses full of supporters from Tow Law or Spennymoor or Crook. They seemed such far off places, somehow separate from Sunderland.’
That matchday memory of a Sunderland childhood was shared with me many years ago by Kate Adie, the top BBC reporter, in an interview for Wear Down South, the magazine of the London and SE branch of the Sunderland AFC Supporters’ Association.
Jake: ‘come on Jordan. Just give us one more season. Please’
Monsieur Salut writes: Pete Sixsmith has done with Sunderland for this season, at least as far as attending games is concerned. You will not see his seven-word verdict but Bob Chapman’s.
After the awfulness of the last home game, our Lads at least mustered defiance and occasional threat. Forget the overwhelming dominance of the stats – shots on goals, corners and so on. Arsenal were forced to fight for this win. Jordan Pickford was superb, Billy Jones stuck as well as anyone might to Alexis Sanchez and was perhaps unlucky that the Chilean scored both goals and Jermain Defoe ran and ran. Even Januzaj ran in his cameo substitute’s appearance. Effort and concentration of this sort, much more often, would have added some points to a miserable tally …
We all know relegated teams like to turn it on for the swansong. After the meekest of surrenders to Swansea, SAFC players – especially those with an eye on lucrative summer transfers – will accordingly raise their game at Arsenal. Two for Defoe, one more for Billy Jones as we romp to a 3-1 win. Mmm ….
Sunderland AFC: a club that can hire the dross we’ve seen hired and embrace CEOs and directors of football who bring only misery can still find the commercial nous needed to sack backroom staff and get rid of such a SAFC institution as the programme editor, Rob Mason.
We’ve plenty more to say, Messrs Short and Bain, so watch this space.
Jon Ryan: ‘Ozil and Sanchez would have fitted into the Invincibles’
Colin Randall writes: it is beginning to feel like a farewell. People supporting other clubs who have written, or been interviewed, in the past at Salut! Sunderland have been popping up again and this time it’s as we prepare to depart the Premier League. Will we have the stamina to find 46 ‘Who are You?’ candidates, plus fans of teams we meet for probably one round in each cup, next season? We’ll see.
Jon Ryan* is a friend, former colleague and lifelong Arsenal supporter. He misses the great occasions at Highbury, thinks the Emirates a great stadium as new ones go but little more than ‘part of the London entertainment scene’, and is worried about Arsène Wenger having been a great admirer. He’s been sympathetic all season towards SAFC but identified a need for change that hasn’t been forthcoming …
Jake: ‘Boro have won five games all season, two of them against us – ’nuff said’
Pete Sixsmith will have more to say, here and standing in for Monsieur Salut at ESPNFC, but this is his immediate post-match verdict on another wretched defeat, once again when facing fairly poor opposition. Some folk were clinging to the straw of a possible West Ham demotion after today’s HMRC raids. They won’t be now. I am told Gary Bennett had this to say on radio: ‘I tell you what… no, I can’t tell you anything. I’ve got nothing to say’. Sixer thought we deserved a point from as dismal a game as you’ll encounter. As Jake said in his caption above, ’nuff said’ …
I’m sending out an SOS, ‘cos I’m in so much distress
When Peter Lynn, young-at-heart but prematurely aged physically by watching Sunderland, began his exercise in calculating how the rest of the season would go, he concluded that 37 points would be enough for survival – and that we’d get them.
After enduring the atrocious displays at home to Stoke and then at West Brom, even forgetting the equally clueless cup exit at Burnley in between, you might expect him to chuck in the towel.
Not so.
Pete predicted no points against Stoke, knew we’d be booted out of the FA Cup at Turf Moor, and bargained on only a draw at the Hawthorns. So he has only one point to retrieve. Will it come? Where might it come from? Well, Pete reckons we’ll beat Spurs for a start, though he doesn’t say how beyond a call for 100 per cent support from the crowd and Honeyman-level commitment from the team ….
Manish Patel* is a man on a mission. He has already raised £1.200 of pounds for Children in Need, by running hundreds of miles, and has set his heart on piling on those sorts of pounds for the charity with four full marathons and a total of 1,000 miles this year. See his page at justgiving.com. In between times, he loves sport and is a passionate West Bromwich Albion supporter. We can hardly begrudge him his joy at Albion’s progress underTony Pulis – or blame him for fearing Sunderland haven’t much hope of avoiding the drop (we get the same feeling every season) …
