Sunderland

SAFC vs Barnsley Who are You? ‘What was that about, Mido?’

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Lucy Dawn: ‘I’m older than I look’

Monsieur Salut writes: what an enjoyable series Who are You? is to edit this season. I am not suggesting we should therefore remain contentedly in League One, but if you’ve been following the interviews we’ve published so far, you’ll know what I mean.

Lucy Dawn* – who makes point of not giving her age, though we are far to gentlemanly to ask in any case – comes up with another fine set of answers to our questions. The game itself, which she hopes to attend, is as important as they get at this stage of the season – we’re on a 13-game unbeaten run, they’d won six on the trot until Saturday’s home draw with Doncaster …

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Barnsley Guess the Score: salute fighting spirit but it’s time to resume winning

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No mugs this Tuesday but there is prize … read on

Before introducing Guess the Score, Monsieur Salut has some words to add on the Max Power issue. They are not the words I originally wrote to accompany the article …

What I felt and many others felt was the rank stupidity of Max Power, a gifted player enough suspected of possessing the suicidal tendencies often if wrongly attributed to lemmings, dumped Sunderland into deep trouble with his 23rd minute red card, number three of the season, at Walsall.

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Walsall Who are You?: (1) ‘SAFC-Newcastle the most antagonistic game I’ve seen’

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Richard Hall

Monsieur Salut writes (and guess how easy it is to write Monsieur Slut by mistake): I knew some games would be a struggle for Who are You? and Walsall away this Saturday was already proving a challenge before we were duly drawn against them in the FA Cup for a week later. Richard Hall*, located by the usual online searches, agreed to have a go. So why not get him to do both games; why not go back to him for the return league game?

So Richard’s answers on the League One match, and revelations about his cultural tastes (Shostakovich fifth, the works of an American ‘Marxist humanist’ Raya Dunayevskaya and even a spot of Michael Jackson washed down with old world wine) will be followed next week by his FA Cup thoughts. It amounts to another great read in this series. And Richard knows the North East well, having worked in Middlesbrough, lived in Darlington and joined a friend for games at the SoL. But we’ll try to spare him a third set of questions …

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From drawing for Salut! Sunderland to Hollywood recognition: Jake’s tale

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Salut! Sunderland readers know him as Jake. At Facebook, he lengthens the nom-de-plume to Jake Lark. But it is time for John Clark, illustrator and – late in life – musician to step out of the shadows of anonymity.

John, a retired railway engineer who has maintained his lifelong support for Sunderland from his Spanish exile, is one member of a trio, Murder Valley, that is on the brink of an impressive breakthrough.

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Walsall vs SAFC Guess the Score: winner gets the new TFTRW book

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Jake, our illustrator based out in Spain, has some news of his own. Watch this space

According to our Walsall “Who are You?” candidate, whose thoughts have just landed and will be published on Thursday, we will either be thrashed 4-1 “because we love being the underdogs”, or Sunderland will romp to victory “because sometimes the wheels really do come off”. Nothing in between.

And for the FA Cup game a week later, he reckons we will batter them for most of the game but lose 1-0.

Most of that is emphatically not what it says in the script, writes Monsieur Salut. After missing an open-goal chance to go top by beating Wycombe Wanderers, we must regain our former momentum. Barnsley, next up after this game, are looking good again and breathing loudly down our necks.

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Vote to rename the Stadium of Light south stand. Then on to North, West and East?

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Monsieur Salut welcomes plans to rename one of the Stadium of Light stands …

Maybe Bradley Lowery, which would have been my choice, is a name for one of the other three stands.

But SAFC have made a decent first response to popular will, announcing that the loudest of the four, the south stand, will become one of these: The Roker End, The Wearside End, The Colliery End and The Raich Carter End. A fans’ vote will decide the matter.

My own preference, just ahead of Raich Carter, would be The Roker End, geographically sound and evoking the old place when older fans spent every other Saturday, savouring the glories of the Roker Pie Shop or munching “tanner a bag” peanuts. My vote is already cast.

Raich should get the West stand since from there you can – I think – point in the direction of the Hendon of his boyhood (never forget that his son, also Raich, donated his HAWAY award – for best “Who are You?” interview of the 2013-14 season – to the sports centre there).

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Sixer’s Sevens: Wycombe Wanderers give us a timely reminder

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Pete Sixsmith texted at half time that there wasn’t much happening and Wycombe looked comfortable. Half an hour later he was texting to say that we had much to do.

Did we do it?yes and no – enough to keep our unbeaten at home record, not enough to keep another clean sheet and not enough to win.

And his final seven word text suggests that’s fair enough:

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A rocking manager, Martin O’Neill glory days, Luke O’Nien: the Wycombe Wanderers ‘Who are You?’

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Jon Dickinson: on stage (right) accompanying the Wycombe Wanderers boss and former player Gareth Ainsworth

Monsieur Salut writes: I may have said it before but League One is a treasure trove when it comes to Who are You? interviews, or is once I can locate a warm, witty and/or wise supporter from each club. There will be stumbles as the season progresses – the FA Cup draw left me with the task of finding not one but two Walsall candidates (it was often hard enough to get one when we were in the Championship), the Barnsley game has crept up on me and I haven’t even started thinking about Accrington Stanley and Bristol Rovers. Walsall (one fan covering both the forthcoming games) and Barnsley are sorted after a burst of energy yesterday, but recommendations for other coming games would be appreciated.

Jon Dickinson‘s* Who are You? makes the effort worthwhile. I love the pride he takes in supporting his own unfashionable local team but most of all, I love his responses about Martin O’Neill, Wycombe Wanderers’ amateur football history, what colleagues made of Sunderland when he conducted a straw poll at work and the manager who, when not managing, belts out rock music ….

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SAFC vs Wycombe Wanderers: a prized return for Guess the Score

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Click the image to pre-order your copy (in case you don’t win Guess the Score or have a Christmas gift in mind)

Our thanks to Tales From Publishing, the people behind the Tales From the Red and Whites series on books about Sunderland AFC, for donating this week’s Guess the Score prize …

Stand by, until tomorrow, for a serious contender for the end-of-season awards for the best of the 2018/19 Who are You? features.

We may be struggling to find opposing fans for every match but the Wycombe Wanderers volunteer, Jon Dickinson, has produced some cracking responses – and a great photo showing the Chairboys’ former manager and former playing hero Gareth Ainsworth in, shall we say, more musical that footballing mode.

Anyone who remembers the glory days of amateur football, in which Wanderers played an important part as did North-Eastern sides led by Bishop Auckland, will also find it a great read. Come back tomorrow for a treat. But for now, there’s important business ahead so Guess the Score.

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The North Eastern Programme Club: (3) looking on from the sidelines

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Click me for a better view of the ingredients: geographical references to Jake, Monsieur Salut & Sixer, Malcolm Dawson and John McCormick

Hopelessly out of sequence but bit by bit, we are adding the articles written by members of the Salut! Sunderland team for the matchday programme. This was Malcolm Dawson‘s contribution, published in the programme for the Peterborough United game, drawn 2-2 at the beginning of October, and it is interesting to look at the way the teams he mentions have fared since then (check the table at this link) …

When I looked at the make-up of EFL League One before the season kicked off and tried to assess our chances, the majority of the teams seemed an unknown quantity. After all, apart from the four games involving Burton Albion and Barnsley, we hadn’t met any of the clubs – other than in a few pre-season friendlies – for several years.

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