Sunderland

Liverpool lullabies: Jordan Henderson, David Ngog and the wicked media

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Image: addick-tedKevin


It goes without saying that Salut! Sunderland is sad at the imminent departure of just the sort of player we rather hoped Sunderland AFC would see as central to future development. After the Darren Bent saga, we also hoped we would never again sell a key player without having a suitable replacement or replacements lined up. It remains to be seen whether our wish will be granted in at least that respect …

See also: Thanks, Jordan, goodbye – and give us a wave at Anfield

So after all the “Jordan Henderson’s going nowhere” posturing, all the attacks on sports journalists for supposedly making up transfer stories, guess what? Reports all over the press, on the web and on the air say Jordan Henderson has all but been sold to Liverpool, just as the reviled hacks said would be the case. And just as I finish writing this piece, up pops a statement from Sunderland AFC:

Jordan Henderson will hold talks with Liverpool after the two clubs agreed a fee for the midfielder.
The 20-year-old, who played for England under-21s on Sunday, is set to discuss personal terms with the Anfield club.
A club spokesperson said: “A fee has been agreed with Liverpool for Jordan Henderson and he travels to Anfield today with the club’s blessing.”

With the club’s blessing! All we seem to be waiting for, it seems, is word on whether the fee is £20m, £13m plus David Ngog or something else entirely. On the reported inclusion of Ngog in the deal, I will say no more just now than that he was not the sort of player I had in mind when hoping against hope that we would not repeat the glaring errors of January.

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Danny Welbeck: a Manchester United treasure we’d love to be ours

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Throughout the past season, Pete Sixsmith contributed appraisals of Danny Welbeck’s progress to a Manchester United site Stretford End Arising*. This, again at the site’s request, is his assessment of Welbeck over the season as a whole …

In the late 1960s, when I was idling my time away in the Sixth Form at Bishop Auckland Grammar School (Stan Laurel had attended in the earlier days of the century), there was a very popular disc by a beat combo known as The Scaffold. Entitled Thank You Very Much, the three chirpy Scousers who made up the group went through a list of things that they wanted to say, er, TYVM for.

As Sunderland supporters, we can say “Thank You Very Much For Danny Welbeck, Particularly For Those Months Either Side Of Christmas When He Was Brilliant” and United fans can say to Sunderland “Thank You Very Much For Looking After Danny Welbeck And Turning Him Into An International Player”. A true mutual admiration society.

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Write your own script for Sunderland. Rewards in heaven

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Kitchener Wants You!http://www.flickr.com/photos/brostad/2631281450/

If a website can find eight people to write end-of-season reviews, it is probably getting something right in terms of attracting voices on board and making them heard.

It is likely that each of those eight people will contribute further articles for use at Salut! Sunderland in the weeks and months to come. Their efforts are typically seen by hundreds, maybe even thousands, of readers who necessarily love football and are likely to share their passion for Sunderland.

But there is room for more.

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Michael Gray: that penalty miss, those drinks and other priceless Charlton recollections

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A Love Supreme

Michael Gray has found that when one door opens – allowing him to embark on a promising new career as a TV and radio pundit – another he wishes had closed years ago stays open, wider than ever.

As he puts it in a terrific interview in The Guardian:

“Nobody’s interested in my England caps, in me finishing seventh in the Premier League with Sunderland or Blackburn … none of the good stuff. All they want to hear about is that bloody penalty. I don’t mind that now but at the start it was one of those stories I didn’t want to talk about. But looking back, I think it marked a point where I became a stronger person and it helped get me to where I got in my career.”

So he wouldn’t necessarily thank Salut! Sunderland for repeating Stephen Worthy‘s account from the Blackcats list – except that it does add wonderfully to the folkore surrounding those momentous few seconds of a momentous day …

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Salut!’s week: Arsenal honours, Barca barbs, Liverpool chancers, Sunderland ratings

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Mrs Logic

As mentioned here last Saturday, there may be no need for weekly digests throughout the close season, when good people ought to be turning their thoughts to holidays, picnics and Durham County Cricket Club (top of the league when last I checked).

But this has been an unusually busy week, more so than many during the football season.

We concluded a great set of end-of-season reviews, eight well-argued verdicts on what it was like to be a Sunderland supporter in 2010-2011.

There were the “Who are You?” awards to dispense – Arsenal the winners – plus musings on North-eastern footballing allegiances, Liverpool’s reported bid to lure Jordan Henderson to Anfield, one last look at the game in France … and the demolition of Manchester United by Barcelona. As always, click on the sub-heading if it makes you want to read more …

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Bursting with praise for Barcelona – or just bursting their bubble

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Mundial 2010 (España - Paraguay) #4Image: Palm Z

What was the headline, or one of them, on Monday morning? “Beautiful force”. Somewhere else, I saw Barcelona described as the best club football team since time began, or similar. Even our own unflappable Pete Sixsmith rattled off his post-Orwell Homage to Catalonia.

But Pete and those headline writers were hardly alone in being mesmerised by the Barca performance that clinically neutralised Manchester United – not the best United you’ve seen, but Premier champions and all that – to carry off the Champions’ League trophy. You would need to have been a United or Real Madrid supporter of the most blinkered kind not to have seen the gulf between the two sides.

There is, all the same, an alternative viewpoint.

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Liverpool and Henderson: harden our hearts and make them pay

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Image: addick-tedKevin


Can it really be true that this may be one of the last times we have reason to use our friend addick-tedKevin‘s Jordan graphic? It could be no more than idle speculation, but there is a worryingly credible look to it …

For months we have had to endure hot air about Sir Alex Ferguson, Roberto Mancini or Arsène Wenger planning a seat on their substitute benches for our gifted young midfielder, with our own feelings soothed by protestations on his behalf that he is happy at Sunderland. And now the Daily Mail confidently reports that Jordan Henderson’s most likely destination is Anfield.

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Sunderland report cards: (8) Pete Sixsmith tastes the delight and despair

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For the final part of our series of end-of-season reports, we turn to Pete Sixsmith, whose previews, commentary and match analyses distinguish the pages of Salut! Sunderland, proving that the sum of the parts can indeed be greater than the whole. Concluding a fascinating collection of reviews published over the past week or so, Pete offers a balanced assessment of what Steve Bruce has achieved, and where he has under-achieved …

Another season gone, the 47th of my regular Sunderland-supporting life – and the third most successful if league positions are the sole criteria of a good season.

The only ones to beat it were the two seventh places under Peter Reid, so Steve Bruce has exceeded anything that Alan Brown, Ian McColl, Bob Stokoe, Jimmy Adamson, Ken Knighton, Alan Durban, Len Ashurst, Lawrie McMenemy, Dennis Smith, Malcolm Crosby, Terry Butcher, Mick Buxton, Howard Wilkinson, Mick McCarthy, Roy Keane and various assorted caretakers and stop gaps have achieved. And yet…….

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Sunderland report cards: the essential guide to our eight-part series

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Addick-tedKevin

In the end, the Positive Party succeeded in making its voice heard. Only the most naive supporter could expect the sort of post-January collapse we suffered to go unscrutinised, uncriticised. Equally, however, there were signs at various points of the season of real advances being made by Sunderland AFC and while no one should get carried away, it was right that these signs should be acknowledged in our contributors’ reports.

The eight Sunderland supporters who presented their reflections on the 2010-2011 season may not, when considered against a 40,000 average gate and the huge, absent diaspora, represent a scientific sample (even though the world is expected to take notice when an opinion poll is based on the views of 1,000 people drawn from a population exceeding 60m).

Even so, this is intended as a handy digest to a series Salut! Sunderland is proud to have published and offers brief extracts from each piece with a link leading to the full posting at the merest click of the subheading. And if the end-of-the-season partwork has run its course, rest assured the debate will go on …

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1) Arsenal 2) Man City 3) Wolves: the ‘Who are You?’ winners

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At each season’s end, we ask a group of judges to pore through up to 50 interviews with supporters of each team Sunderland faced in league and cup, and choose the best. Competition was tough; the panel was offered a non-binding shortlist that stretched to a dozen or so articles, and has reached its verdict …

The judging is over and we have our winners.

A superb season of “Who are You?” interviews, from which any of a dozen, maybe more, stood a decent chance of snatching a top three place in the annual awards, has produced its winners. And we are indebted to When Saturday Comes and Octopus Publishing for coming up with some prizes: a year’s subscription to the more than half-decent WSC, money to spend in the “shop” at the magazine’s website and a copy of the tremendous book of black and white football photography, John Tennant’s Football: the golden age.

Step forward, then, Tom Watt, a well-known NCO in the vast army of Arsenal supporters. In a close-run contest, Tom’s thoughtful, passionate answers were chosen by the Salut! Sunderland judging panel as the best of the lot.

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