Monsieur Salut writes: each matchday, ESPN FC expects me – or Pete Sixsmith when I am away – to send a report with a brief summary of the game followed by out-of-10 ratings for manager and team.
Sunderland have rejected a £6m bid from West Ham for striker Jermain Defoe, Sky sources understand
Salut! Sunderland pays relatively little heed to rubbishy transfer window speculation.
In the past, much or maybe most turned out to be untrue, no more than the manipulations of clubs and agents or the imaginations of football journos.
But these days, clubs – some clubs, then only sometimes – are more open about their wishes and their dealings. We already know Slaven Bilic fancies bringing Jermain Defoe back to West Ham. We know Crystal Palace, absurdly located in one of the worst places to get to in London, even from London. want him, too.
These are my messages more fully:
Like most people, I have no idea what Jermain Defoe’s contract says about his right to leave Sunderland in the event of this or that bid being made.
Like most people, I know that Slaven Bilic rates him as highly as we do and knows his movement and his goals make him an unusually gifted striker. And our old pal Big Sam would apparently love to get him down to the backwaters of south London.
And like all Sunderland supporters, I believe that if Defoe shows the slightest hint of being tempted to join either club, or anyone else, Ellis Short should throw whatever it takes – money, the freedom of Sunderland if he has the ear of someone at the council, even David Moyes’s famed £30,000 watch – to keep him.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
It is not often that a Who are You? interview is re-posted. On this occasion, 24 hours (23 actually) ahead of our home game against Liverpool, it seems a natural thing to do. Why? Well, it’s a good interview but that alone wouldn’t be enough. Nor would the fact that not all readers will have seen it first time around.
It is simple really. The juxtaposition of fixtures over the New Year period, two in three days, led us to publish the Liverpool WAY even before the Watford match had been played (albeit by only the home side since Sunderland didn’t turn up). Even without the latest injuries (Kone and Anichebe), this seemed a tough old game, the sort you go into after a fine away win against a side much lower down the table. That went wrong, of course, so we need heroics tomorrow. Watching Watford v Spurs gave an idea of the gulf between top and lower midtable, so we must expect the worst while hoping for the best when second top meets third bottom. You can still enter Guess the Score, by the way – just forget the Burnley part! …
It hardly seems appropriate after yesterday but Salut! Sunderland wishes all readers, including those who contribute to its pages, a very happy new year …
Monsieur Salut writes: surely no football team sets out to play as woefully as ours did at Burnley yesterday. It just happens. Sadly, of course, it seems to happen to Sunderland more than to most.
Supporting Sunderland has never been easy and few of us will stop doing so because of the meek and clueless surrender at Turf Moor. But where do we go from here (yes, I realise the answer is fairly obvious, but I mean if we are to give ourselves any hope of redemption)? Peter Sixsmith, who suffered with the rest of the travelling contingent in Lancashire, was asked by The Observer to set out our transfer prospects. This was his response, naturally submitted before yesterday’s calamitous events …
Let us meet Andy Robinson*, our Burnley ‘Who are you?’ volunteer for both forthcoming games between us, at Turf Moor in the Premier League on Saturday and at our place in the FA Cup a week later. Andy, who says he hasn’t missed many home games in 30 years, loyally wants and predicts wins for his team in both games but, when you return for his follow-up thoughts on the cup match next week, has an interesting view on league vs cup. Here is his look ahead to Saturday’s crunch match at the bottom (note that his shopping list of players he’d be happy to take from Sunderland preceded news of the Jordan Pickford injury) …
Salut! Sunderland: Presumably you’d take defeat in the cup game provided you get three points a week earlier?
Andy Robinson: I’d sell a kidney for three points at the moment so yes.
That makes Saturday’s game all the more important. The good work of the past eight games, producing 12 points and giving Sunderland a fighting chance of getting out of trouble, would be undermined if we came a cropper at Turf Moor unless we then rose to the occasion at the Stadium of Light two days later.
If we can go on scoring goals like this, from Fabio Borini and only by then for pride and goal difference, we’ll be all right.
Having spent Christmas in France – just three nights – I was driving home when the match against Manchester United kicked off. I’d boldly gone for 1-1 at ESPN FC, more from the heart than the head though I did think we had a chance.
It may be a long way to Tipperary but that’s the part of Ireland from where Dale O’Donnell* hails. And his heart lies at Old Trafford. Dale is the editor of Stretty News, which describes itself as ‘one of the most popular Manchester United related blogs in the history of man’. His passion is almost tangible and, while we may question the collective sense of humour breakdown (suffered by him, too) concerning that little Poznan dance at the Stadium of Light when City pipped them for the title, it is refreshing to encounter a United fan able to ‘enjoy these testing times’ …
Alex McMahon argues that Sunderland’s home form will be crucial to manager David Moyes’s attempts to build on recovery from …