So a Sunderland team can score goals, more than they concede, and reach a cup final. Salut! Sunderland promised to think positively in the approach to Bolton away, and we’re true to our word, offering a big bravo to Keith Bertschin and his team for this scoreline in the ToteSport Cup semi-final:
Sunderland Res 5 Preston North End Res 3
Bolton Wanderers have had the sort of season we might have expected, in terms of position and – the Wembley humiliation notwithstanding – progress in the FA Cup. Now they have pride to play for while we are scrapping for a point or two to be absolutely safe. Howard Page* offered some months ago to be our candidate for some questions ahead of this game as we were only too pleased to remind him; Howard would accept bookings for his band to return the favour …
Image: addick-tedKevin
Since it has reached the stage where I can hardly bear to read anything to do with Sunderland AFC, I realise what it must be like for those coming here and feeling curiously forced to do so.
But no apologies whatsoever for returning briefly to action to congratulate Phil Bardsley on winning the Sunderland Supporters’ Association Player of the Year award and Simon Mignolet the young player equivalent.
There’s a big maybe, or series of maybes. First of all, Tangerine dreamers, Hammers and Latics straying this way should take comfort: Pete Sixmith‘s specialist subject is geography not maths. But he’s done the calculations using the BBC predictor page (see footnote*) and very much wanted the headline to read: “It’s official – we’re safe.” To M Salut, that sounded too much like tempting fate …
Whiling away an hour at work this morning, as my Year 11 group negotiated a tricky Media Studies assignment by comparing the online version of Bliss magazine with the printed one (cutting edge of academic education at Ferryhill – we annotated in Latin!), I turned to the BBC predictor page and worked out the rest of the season’s results.
And the good news is we will not go down. Indeed, we will finish with the princely total of 42 points, a real tribute to the effort and determination shown since January.
Steve Bruce has been around football long enough to realise why people are calling for his head today. Some have been questioning his survival as manager for a little while. It goes without saying that anyone who disagrees- Martin in Canada? – should contact Salut! Sunderland, which will find room for the opposing view. But our shadily cantakerous Birflatt Boy is no mood to grant a reprieve. It is hard-hitting, maybe harsh stuff and M Salut would take issue here and there. But these are parlous times for SAFC; supporters now seeing yet another the season unravel can hardly be blamed for feeling aggrieved …
How many more nails to close this coffin?
Football managers can make some horrible decisions. Selling or buying players in transfer deals that should never have seen the light of day, dropping key men in vital games, getting tactics hopelessly wrong (if they ever had any tactics at all) and usually ringing up a series of poor results.
In our case, this combination of shortcomings and blunders has led to relegation on more occasions than people of a certain age can remember without wincing.
M Salut’s prediction that Marseille, having gone top, would stay there lasted all of a few days. Interesting, but no one here really cares about that. What we do care about is what has happened to Sunderland. Pete Sixsmith puts up with a lot in the name of supporting SAFC and reporting so compellingly for Salut! Sunderland. Much more of this, though, and he may well take up matchday trainspotting …
A week on from the win over Wigan that looked as if it had given us a base to build on for the fag end of the season, we are back to where we were after Manchester City, West Brom etc.
Make no mistake (as the manager is fond of saying), this was a shocker. The second half brought to mind the likes of Breen, Lawrence and Davies as we crumbled against a neat and tidy, but hardly world beating Fulham side.
Mrs Logic seeks a helping hand
Apologies to supporters in Crook, Norway and elsewhere who had to wait to see their comments appear – M Salut was away all day yesterday – and also to those who cannot bear to read another word about Sunderland 0 Fulham 3. Sorry, but there’s an awful lot to say. Salut! Sunderland readers include Steve Bruce champions, even in these straitened times but Mick Goulding is not among them, His depressing but incisive and heartfelt thoughts were first expressed at the Blackcats list, but could serve to perfection – with a couple of change, making Bruce read “you” – as a response to the manager’s post-match e-mail …
Dear Steve,
Steve Bruce’s customary post-match e-mail should, for some beleaguered supporters who have already expressed their thoughts, have included the words “I resign”. Such a gesture would, of course, do us no good of any kind with just three games to play this season. But while Bruce has had to grapple with appalling injury problems, this was a dire display …
Dear Colin,
Starting with a dreary return to general incompetence at home to Fulham – OK, we have no fit strikers, but does that stop us defending too? – these are the most recent of Pete Sixsmith‘s incisive seven-word verdicts capturing the essence of just about every game. When, rarely, Pete is absent, a supersub does it for him.
All horrendously flat today; some good first-half approach work brought no reward, Fulham took an undeserved lead before reaching a scoreline that suggested a romp but really just reflected our own capitulation. There will be no immediate post-match report tonight, though Pete’s full analysis will appear within the next couple of days.
The full Sixer’s Sevens archive – see link below – encapsulates the matchday experiences, from darkest gloom to sublime elation, of a fan who is usually there …
April 30 2011 SAFC (0) 0 Fulham (1) 3 No forwards, creaky defence, hurry up summer
You know Pete Sixsmith. It takes only an FA Cup Final, wall-to-wall Rugby Union or an England international to drive him on to the road to satisfy his immense appetite for the more obscure corners of football. A royal wedding was just the prompt he needed …
Oliver Cromwell was a great Englishman, of that there is no doubt. Under the rule of the Commonwealth, there would have been no royal weddings or any of the page-after-page reporting that goes with it; good as that is for Samson’s litter tray, it is not great for the brain.
Unfortunately, Olly had a bit of a downer on football and ale, so maybe I would not have been as pleased by old Ironside as I originally made out. As well as his his highly visible and undisguised wart, he also had other imperfections.