Sunderland

Cheer up Peter Reid – but don’t forget when it was gloomy

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Image: A Love Supreme



Peter Reid presided over great escape, glorious triumph and terrible misery in his seven-and-a-half years in charge at Roker Park and then the Stadium of Light. Let us honour the heady heights of his reign while not overlooking the troughs …


Sad to say, the official Sunderland AFC club site played a stinker in ignoring a tremendous victory for Sunderland Women’s FC as they reached the quarter-finals of the FA Women’s Cup.

But it was smart enough to take advantage of the club’s admirable decision to make training facilities available to Peter Reid’s Plymouth Argyle during his relegation-haunted, liquidation-threatened team’s trip up north. Argyle went home with a point out of six; safc.com grabbed an interview.

Freed of the waffle, this is what Reid said of his time in charge at SAFC:

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The Premier League is King? You’re having a laugh

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The controversy stirred by Niall Quinn over stayaway, see-it-in-the-pub supporters, quickly followed by his candid admission that Sunderland AFC are not serious Premier title challengers, set Jeremy Robson thinking. Where the thought process led him is not calculated to please those for whom English football sits at the top of the world …

The Emperor’s underpants are looking shabby.

We’ve been told the English Premier League is the best in the world. As much as we all love the league and our teams that participate in it, as well as the premier league betting that comes with it, to call it the very best league in the world may be a slight over-exaggeration at this point.

Commentators and summarisers wax lyrical over games which barely stir the pulse. Millions of pounds are handed over with little thought for not even mediocre players who really couldn’t justify a place in the car park, let alone the starting XI.

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Soapbox: season tickets, semi-finals and Nicky Sharkey

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Season ticket renewal time has Pete Sixsmith momentarily undecided as he contrasts the snarling faces of Premier League football and honest-to-goodness non-league fare …

The season ticket forms dropped through the letterbox this week, closely followed by an email from the club telling me that I didn’t have to do anything and they would instruct my bank to carry on with the Direct Debits.

Of course, I can always cancel the DDs and the season ticket and I have had one or two little doubts creeping into the far corners of what passes for my mind. Some of it is to do with Sunderland AFC but most of it is about the general state of the Premier League and its “leading” clubs.

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Salut!’s week: a worthy point at Arsenal and the West Ham rip-off

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Mrs Logic

Another review of the week gone by for the busy reader who appreciates a regular digest of what’s been going on here (and ps: see our FA Cup wishlist) …

Among Salut! Sunderland‘s pet hates, a weekend without football ranks high.

There are FA Cup 6th round ties this weekend, and important FA Youth Cup games (the FA’s own site originally had Liverpool and Man Utd having to play their 6th round tie before the winners beetled off down the M6 to London for the first leg of a semi final at Chelsea three hours later: the semi has now been put back to Wednesday).

And Sunderland’s ladies’ team carry our best wishes in their FA Women’s Cup 5th round game against Lincoln City.

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Cup wishlist: Man United, Man City out. Arsenal or Reading’s trophy

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Bob Stokoe statue, Stadium of Light, SunderlandImage: Mrs Logic

Salut! Sunderland has absolutely nothing against the city of Manchester. We hold no grudges against Stoke or Bolton.

But choices have to be made. Sunderland’s humiliating exit at the earliest possible stage of the FA Cup means we have been able to pick our runners at will in subsequent rounds.

So to do our bit to restore interest in the ailing old competition, colours will now be nailed to the FA Cup mast.

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Sunderland v Liverpool: a turn-up for the books

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The Anfield dressing room, home of Liverpool FC, and the shirts of Jamie Carragher, Sami Hyypia, Daniel Agger, Martin Skrtel, Fabio Aurelio and Andrea DossenaBen Sutherland

In which Niall Quinn gets close to an apology for the D for Despise outburst …

Sunderland will play Liverpool to a packed house of almost 49,000 a week on Sunday, a terrific piece of news made better because the match is live on television.

The response to the lingering attraction of Kenny Dalglish’s club, and our own hugely encouraging season (for all the blips), is so much more welcome because of the recent controversy caused by Niall Quinn’s attack on supporters who watch games on illegal pub broadcasts.

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French football: Marseille come clean as Brandao accused of rape

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In Salut! Sunderland‘s French Fancies series, we take a look at a display of candour of a type rarely encountered in the English game …


It seems almost unimaginable in the Premier League.

A player is suspected of forcing his sexual attentions on a woman in a motorway service area. Far from clamming up behind an absurd wall of “none of your business” silence, the club’s chairman talks openly about his exasperation with the player’s general conduct.

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Changing places: Newcastle and other away fans (plus their prison cells)

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Go to jailShayne Kaye


So you didn’t know the Stadium of Light had a secondary role as part of HM Prison Service? Read on …

From the Sunderland Echo‘s Graeme Anderson comes as welcome a spot of news as we’ve seen since, well, Danny Welbeck returned from injury.

Sunderland, he says, are considering how to move away fans to a different part of the Stadium of Light than the large, usually too large, section of the South stand they are currently allocated.

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Ellis Short: the Mackem passion of a ‘perfect owner’

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A Love Supreme

If Ellis Short does not quite observe a Trappist vow of silence, he is a man of few words, in public at least. But now he plans a rare interview about his ownership of – and plans for – Sunderland AFC …

You’d almost think the Pope, the Queen or Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali were about to bare their souls to the world live on network TV.

The North-eastern press is solemnly reporting that Ellis Short, esteemed owner of Sunderland AFC, is – to quote the Sunderland Echo – to “make another address to the club’s fans in the near future”.

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