Sunderland

Steve Bruce gets major boost: absolutely no vote of confidence

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Image: Mrs Logic
This is to do with the dishonesty, humbug and spin of everyday corporate life, whether the corporation makes biscuits, produces oil or runs a football club.

It has nothing specifically to do with Sunderland AFC, or whether we/they should stick with Steve Bruce in the belief that for all the unpromising signs, things are still more or less on the right course.

That is a related but different argument which is endlessly debated here and at many other places (I remain in the Bruce In camp, but only just and also because I have come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that his hand has been forced in one or two key decisions that have adversely affected performance and prospects).

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Gyan, Quinn and the root of ‘all sorts of nonsense’

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Niall Quinn speaks out on the Asamoah Gyan debacle …

Once and for all, let Salut! Sunderland remind SAFC, and the chairman most of us hold in such esteem, that when misleading information and speculation are presented by the media, from newspapers to TV and online sources, interested parties and even supporters, the clubs often have themselves to blame.

Football clubs, in common with politicians, public agencies and business generally, like to control the release of information as best they can. If this means a little manipulation over timing, or a degree of economy with the truth, you can bet your bottom dollar that is how it will be.

But as shown yet again, this time by the Asamaoh Gyan saga – which the dumbest boy in class could have predicted would cause more than the odd ripple – those who mould the truth to their own, often respectable agenda are eventually stung into making more open public statements than they ever intended.

It is a function of the age; nothing the most secretive entity chooses to do about it can stop, for long, the flow of unwelcome information – and, yes, disinformation and misinformation.

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Soapbox: far too comfortable for Chelsea

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As the club adopts the familiar look of one in turmoil, Pete Sixsmith admits to deep concerns in his analysis of the many shortcomings all too visible in Saturday’s defeat by Chelsea. Rather a lot, he suggests, now depends on the team’s – and especially Steve Bruce’s – immediate response …

There have been a few dispiriting days for a Sunderland supporter over the past 48 years, and Saturday was up there with the big ones.

It may be wise to keep off the Gyan move for a couple of days and see what emerges from both sides (read this link to catch up), but it was a major disappointment so see a striker go after the deadline, leaving us bereft of even a semi-regular goalscorer.

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Asamoah Gyan: the truth?

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Asamoah by addick-tedKevin


Gary Al-Smith is a respected commentator on African football.

At supersport.com, he has given a detailed and quite depressing account of the events leading to yesterday’s bombshell announcement that a player signed as a world-class striker for £13m little more than a year ago was on his way to play his football in the fabulously rich but, in terms of football quality, lowly environment of the UAE.

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Bruce’s Banter: lauding Chelsea, sticking together, seeing it through

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Steve Bruce‘s day got off to a bad start with the announcement that he had lost a third top striker, this time Asamoah Gyan, off on loan to the Al-Ain, second city in the Abu Dhabi emirate of the UAE. Then we faced Chelsea. And, to no great surprise, lost, much more soundly beaten than the 2-1 scoreline suggests. This was his post-match e-mail …

Dear Colin,

Chelsea were excellent today and they played the ball fantastically well – that’s why they play at the level they do.

They frustrated us with the possession they had, however, we did have some good chances, but on the day we have to admit that Chelsea were that bit better than us.

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Salut!’s week: a Chelsea build-up and a Newcastle putdown

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Another of those retrospective looks, for the reader in a hurry, at what has been served up in recent days …

Breaks for internationals act a little like “slow down” signals for Salut! Sunderland.

Occasional contributors do not think of tossing anything our way. M Salut was away in Rome in any case, for a long weekend devoid of football unless you count a look round the Colisseum, a model – in terms of the building rather than original purpose – for the stadiums of today.

And for once, not even Pete Sixsmith could be trusted to return from some non-league backwater with flashes of entertaining prose. It remains to be seen whether he chooses to write about his own trip, a few days in Antwerp.

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Tyne twaddle: thin slices of Sunderland life through Newcastle eyes

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… in which an intrepid Geordie penetrates the iron defences surrounding Sunderland and presents a brave account of life behind enemy lines. And he manages it all without seeing more than the Bridges centre, a pub and a bit of the museum …

Although he supports Newcastle United, Dave Eadevic may well be a decent lad, hard-working, loyal, good company over a pint, bright even. But he also fancies himself as a writer and I am not, if truth be told, looking forward to his first book.

If you are going to compose an epic article with the title Fear and Loathing in Sunderland, and make it stretch over two parts, you really do need to have something to say, even if the forum is no more than a Toon blog, Tyne Talk.

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Chelsea and the new order: ‘above Liverpool, beneath Man Utd & City’

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Denise: 'SAFC will finish just inside top 10'

Denise Hone*, ChelseaD from The Chelsea Blog, has been here before, but without the real name. She previewed our great win at Stamford Bridge last season and – despite that – agreed to have another go at the Salut! Sunderland questions ahead of Saturday’s return to proper, post-international football. Denise does her “biggest pessimist” credentials no harm as she offers interesting responses on a range of issues from changing places at the top of the Premier to her Chelsea loves and hates, cheating and the weather up north …

Salut! Sunderland: You obviously saw it coming, last season’s 3-0 win for us at your place? Explain it all the same!

I saw defeat coming, maybe not 3-0 to you but it was on the cards. We’d started the season so well after a rubbish pre-season but as every game went on cracks started to appear and the wins were less convincing. It was always a matter of time before the wheels came off – and when they did, it was no Formula One pit stop.

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Bravo Sheffield, Southampton & Portsmouth: in the pink with Sunderland

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Capturing happier derby days

Both Pete Sixsmith and I have revelled in nostalgia for the Saturdays that were incomplete without a) football (honest, we saw football on Saturdays) and b) the “Pink” on the way home.

For home games, that meant getting off the train in Durham and having time before the connection to Bishop Auckland to drop down into town, have coffee and a pie and buy the football paper. We hoped the Echo would come before we had to climb back up the hill; sometimes we had to make do with the Newcastle Evening Chronicle version though on a good day we could get both.

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