Monsieur Salut writes: roll up, roll up to place your predicted scoreline for the opening game of our return to the third tier – or to claim old prizes I somehow overlooked (one Evertonian, Bernard Walker, is in that category and will receive his I-won’t-let-this-change-me award, a mug, for correctly forecasting the dismal result of last season’s League Cup game, as soon a possible.
Another day, another signing. Despite the six goals at St Mirren, we still need a boost in the striker department, …
Monsieur Salut offers the traditional Salut! Sunderland welcome to a new signing – Watford’s young striker Jerome Sinclair on a season-long loan deal …
Like many – most? – supporters, I am less than exhilarated by loan deals. They seem to have played a significant part in our decline in recent years.
But it is not as if our purchases and free transfer acquisitions were going so well that no loan deal was necessary. No one should be carried away by winning 6-0 at St Mirren; we have striker problems – I think it was the excellent Phil Smith who said in the Sunderland Echo that we were an injury to Josh Maja away from having no recognised attacker (no disrespect to Andrew Nelson, but he hasn’t played a senior competitive game).
Forgive Salut! Sunderland for being appalled at the double demotion of SAFC Ladies, guilty of no wrongdoing, and thus taking another dig at the FA, SAFC and maybe the SAFC Ladies management itself. Since no one has properly explained, no one knows who is most to blame …
As everyone who cares will know, Sunderland AFC Ladies have been handed what amounts to a double demotion, excluded from the Women’s Super League and its second tier despite finishing seventh top at the highest level of the English game.
I regard this as a scandalous affront to natural justice. The FA thinks it is somehow helping “women’s football to grow and prosper in the future”, though it will not explain – specifically – how such grotesquely unjust an exclusion of a successful team fits into this noble ideal.
Baroness Sue Campbell is the FA’s head of the women’s game. She keeps a straight face when claiming the process of deciding who may be included in the WSL, and who must be excluded, is fair and rewards “clubs willing to up their game and commit to the plans”.
Monsieur Salut writes: you cannot dance on the streets of Raith, or even St Mirren – it’s in Paisley – but I believe you can dance on the street, since there is (or was) a St Mirren Street. I don’t suppose many of our 500 fans at the 6-0 friendly win knew that, or much cared. But David Whitfield, whom I met at Facebook where he’s a friend of Pete Sixsmith’s, was there (not the street, but the game) and kindly agreed with my encouragement and Pete’s to write a short piece about his day. With thanks to him, and Themadmistake at YouTube for the clip …
Having never been to St Mirren’s ground, I decided that when the pre-season schedule was announced this would have to be on my list as one of the friendlies that I would attend.
Pete Sixsmith would have enjoyed this, but was nowhere near Scotland as Jack Ross went back to his last club, St Mirren, and saw his developing Sunderland side romp home 6-0.
(See the highlights here at safc.com)
Pete has been tasting pasties and footie down in Cornwall and will not catch another Sunderland game until the League One season kicks off. Ross’s admiring post-match comments confirmed the adage that when pre-season games go well, they are no longer ‘just about fitness’. The goals came from Josh Maja (2), Lynden Gooch (2), George Honeyman and Luke Molyneux. Apologies to Gooch – we thought it was Molyneux who’d also bagged two.
For this match, we’ll just run a contingency supersub’s verdict in place of Sixer’s usual seven-word summation (and for sake of completeness add ones from the Darlington and Grimsby games, too, though Pete was there for the former).
And while we’re on, does the Maja double act, and goals from midfield, suggest our striker woes are not quite so dire as has been suggested? We’ll see …
The Sunderland team was: McLaughlin; Love (Hume, 80), Ozturk (Taylor, 84), Flanagan, Matthews; Cattermole (Mumba, 74), McGeouch (Hackett, 84), Honeyman (Kimpioka, 84); Maguire, Gooch (Molyneux, 78), Maja Subs: Stryjek
Read more at: https://www.sunderlandecho.com/sport/football/sunderland-afc/impressive-sunderland-hit-st-mirren-for-six-in-convincing-friendly-win-1-9263069
An asterisk preceding any seven-word verdict shows it was not Sixer’s own (we’ve cheated a little with Darlo)…
Salut! Sunderland extends a hearty welcome to Glenn Loovens, who arrives as a free agent having been released by Sheffield Wednesday, while also bidding farewell to Billy Jones (to Rotherham) and Callum McManaman (to Wigan).
No time to do much more than quote safc.com on the new signing of a much-needed defender, getting on a bit for a footballer at 34 but with bags of experience:
Monsieur Salut discusses the need for a sensible balance between openness and discretion in the pre-season transfer market…
Who knows? By the time I finish writing this, or soon afterwards, Sunderland could have clinched the signings of two strikers, a central defender and a midfielder.
If so, the concerns I am about to address will seem unnecessary and pointless.
But does anyone else share my growing reservations about the indiscreet manner of our approach to recruitment? Well I can answer that. They do, or at least one supporter who posted at Twitter does – he made his view known in a robust fashion that would prevent his tweet’s reproduction at this site.
Monsieur Salut writes: in just over two weeks, only Sunderland’s second season as far down as the third tier kicks off with the televised home game against Charlton Athletic. The striker we wanted but they signed, Lyle Taylor, expects a hostile reception but says he’ll cope and simply concentrate on trying to inflict an opening-day defeat on us. Intriguingly, he volunteered a reason for his reluctance to join SAFC in an interview linked here:’Certain things happened. I’m not at liberty to go into the finer details, but certain things were done and said and at the end of the day, that told me enough’.
Here, Pete Lyons, a freelance writer with our club’s interests at heart, reflects on Sunderland’s decline and the prospects for fighting back… I have italicised song titles I recognise but others, and notably Wrinkly Pete, may spot more and I have added a French singer, Jain, as a new contender …
Okay, so Sunderland have surely fallen as low as it’s possible to go for a club of this stature and with the fan base it has.
But there is a mood of optimism and the feeling that things can only get better (how many song titles?). A new owner and a new manager will hopefully instil a new sense of spirit into the club.
As Sunderland rceord a first pre-season win, 1-0 at Grimsby, we also say farewell – or another one since he’s long gone any way, if previously on loan – to Wahbi Khazri.