As far as Salut! Sunderland is concerned, the Portsmouth fan known as Equinox* first surfaced in early 2008, when he answered the call via the Pompey online site to preview a game at Fratton Park. All the way from the south coast to a site for fans of a North-eastern club? Not quite. Our guest began: “Equinox lives in East Boldon. Yes that’s right, East Boldon, just a gnat’s wing away from your beloved SoL.” Living in the North East since 1989, he offered a spell prosecuting at Sunderland Magistrates’ Court as a good reason for an alias. Those days are gone, but he feels it is prudent to remain anonymous, the long arm of the outlaw being what it is. So what does Equinox think about the present turmoil at Pompey, and Saturday’s important game at our place? …
Salut! Sunderland: You have said Pompey is not a happy place. Leaving aside the Carling Cup (oops: Villa won 4-2) and last Saturday’s nice easy home game (vs Burnley, 2-0), you had a nightmare start, some green shoots and then another slump. What has gone wrong and has anything started to go right?
I think that it is fair to say that the stuffing has been knocked out of us, you can insert any similar phrase involving kicking and four colours if you want. Imagine being punched really hard in the guts and that’s how we feel. There have been stories, rumours, counter-rumours since Spring of this year and when you add that into actual factual happenings it really does look as if we are almost bankrupt and without a team. And then in steps Paul Hart who builds a team out of nothing, and, to be fair it probably isn’t the worst team tat the Premiership has seen but they had no pre-season and for a time at least, no wages. The past owner young master Gaydamak apparently said to the Chief exec that he didn’t care if we went into administration and then a feud started – Gaydamak ended up selling to the only skint arab in the village whose media pronouncements verged from the ridiculous to the downright mental.
And then we had all the bad luck going. In the first few games, deflected goals, very dodgy decisions, injuries you name it. And through it all Hart had to carry on trying to mould the team out of his rag bag of players. Personally I think he did well but there is no time in this league if your luck runs out…………….ours never ran out, it never actually started.
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