Sunderland

History lesson: the game that left Toon feeling doon

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9-1 c

During Sunderland’s recent spell of post-Arsenal under-achievement, Newcastle have been recording wins against mighty opposition to stay top of the division that isn’t the Premier. And letting us know about how big a club they are. Time to cheer ourselves up, remind others of their place and – just three days late – celebrate a heartening 101st anniversary. Adapted from an article written by Colin Randall a year ago for The National, Abu Dhabi …

No member of the Toon Army thanked me this time last year for drawing wider attention to the centenary of one of the most momentous league games in English football history.

But then, Newcastle fans would probably feel disinclined to thank me for anything.

All the same, duty obliges me to record that 101 years ago last weekend, having made the short journey to Newcastle, Sunderland did not so much beat the Magpies as pulverise them

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Soapbox: crestfallen at Craven Cottage

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You have been warned. Pete Sixsmith has been in better moods. Sunderland-supporting readers of a sensitive disposition may wish to lock themselves into a small padded room and listen to the collected works of Jedward. If you’re built of stronger stuff, this is Pete’s verdict on a Sunday by the Thames made so dismal by Steve Bruce’s dunces that he wishes he’d stayed in the White Horse and ordered a £9 pint of Thomas Hardy ale. What on earth did Niall Quinn’s guest, Martina Navratilova, make of it? …


As I dragged myself from a warm bed this morning, still groggy after a long journey back from the latest away shambles, I heard the BBC newsreader say that the Government were worried about an increase in depression and anxiety.

One way to prevent this malaise among the red and white army, I snorted, would be to teach defenders to attack the ball when it is punted into the penalty box.

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Prepare for a blasting after Fulham horror show

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whybother


Another away game, another display lacking in guile and (in the first half) even commitment. For the first time, one or two fans are beginning to mutter that phrase: relegation dogfight. That may be an exaggeration; surely all the promise from good performances at home and heroics at Old Trafford cannot have evaporated. Yet Sunderland at Fulham – maintaining the standard of Sunderland at Stoke, Burnley, Birmingham and Wigan – were about as attractive as the back end of the Don Wood’s bus from Murton that I was stuck behind in the west London traffic jam after the match …

Expect a roasting for Sunderland when Pete Sixsmith delivers his Soapbox sermon later today.

The first half was an insult to the marvellous travelling support. The second half, for all our bluster, lacked serious quality in any of the areas of the pitch where it mattered. We never looked like scoring from the half chances that came our way and ended the game pegged in our own half without the least promise of an undeserved equaliser.

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How to beat Fulham (the longer answer than ‘score more goals’))

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karaoke

Let us hope our wish was granted and that beating Sofia 1-0 softened Fulham up. In a detailed assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of our Sunday opponents, based on watching the Fulham game before Sofia, a fellow subscriber to the Blackcats list, Jim Minton, gives us hope that we can do something about our atrocious away form – but also warns about the minefields. He is less forthcoming on the subject of Korean karaoke …

It was my dubious pleasure to watch Fulham v Bolton last weekend in the company of a group of gentlemen who thought it would be a good idea to kick off a stag weekend watching Clint Dempsey slugging it out against Gavin McCann from the corporate boxes at Craven Cottage.

Anyway, rather than digressing into tales of late night karaoke in a Korean bar in Soho and how my rendition of Since You’ve Been Gone came to cruelly curtailed for public health reasons – which is how the stag weekend ended – I thought I’d offer my thoughts on our opponents for Sunday.

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Who are you? We’re Fulham (but we’re not Lily Allen)

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To be honest, we were torn. Lily Allen or Roger Meloy to preview this Sunday’s game at Fulham, Steve Bruce’s latest attempt to prove to the world that Sunderland can perform on the road. Turning up at all would be an encouraging start. Anyway, Salut! Sunderland is not a site to be easily impressed by stardom so Lily was out (a choice made easier by an instant brush-off from her supPress Office). So, you’ll have to make do with her 2010 calendar, a sample from a recently published Observer interview about her football passion** – and, all the way from the USA, the thoughts of Roger*, the Cincinnati Kid and member of the Fuham Exiles fan site …

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Salut! Sunderland: Comfortable last season, some good results so far but a little inconsistent. A fair summary of Fulham?

A fair summary. Getting into the Europa League was a major achievement for Fulham, but with our small squad this could come back and bite us later on in the season as we’ve played a midweek game virtually every week. Our biggest problem is still our away form. We have trouble picking up points from poor teams, such as losing at Wolves and Birmingham, drawing at Wigan and West Ham. Although, the 2-2 at Man. City was a good result considering we were 0-2 down.

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Soapbox: on Kenwyne, Ryan and a chilly night at Hetton

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Hard as nails. That’s Salut! Sunderland’s star writer Pete Sixsmith. Viewed from afar, the North East looked as if cut off from the rest of the world by snow drifts. That must have been a picture of Tow Law. But it was cold enough as Pete saw Sunderland Reserves take on Wigan. Hadn’t we seen as much of Wigan as we’d want for a while? …

Tuesday night and outside it’s cold and the wind is blowing. Inside, the heating is on, the gas fire warms the room, there’s a welcoming bottle of Macallan open and a good book on the coffee table. So, what do you do but dig out the thermals and woolly socks, put on a warm coat and head for a reserve game at Hetton?

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More tributes to Dave Lish

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Many Salut! Sunderland readers have seen Pete Sixsmith’s warm tribute to Dave Lish, the SAFC fan who died suddenly on Nov 22.

Dave and Pete were chatting as usual at the Arsenal game the day before, when there was nothing to suggest Dave was other than in good shape and excellent spirits.

Following our obituary, a lot of other people have now added their own thoughts on Dave and these deserve to be repeated.

In particular, mention at Ready to Go of what Pete wrote has prompted a few more to offer sympathy and homage.

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Darren Bent’s mum: an update on the “racial slur” incident

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LATEST NEWS (Dec 1):

The media are reporting the arrest of a 26-year-old man from Chester-le-Street on suspicion of racially abusing Mrs Bent. He has been bailed pending further inquiries. No further comments can be accepted on this posting.


More details have emerged about the alleged racial taunt that caused such offence to Darren Bent’s mother, and therefore to her son. However, the reporting of the incident is inconsistent and in serious need of proper clarification …

Salut! Sunderland takes no pleasure in returning to the subject of the alleged racial slur that so outraged Darren Bent.

If a report in today’s Northern Echo is correct, then the location of the incident has moved. But it remains a matter of no less concern to what I am sure is the overwhelming majority of Sunderland fans.

Also, taking this account at face value, we can exclude any suggestion that Darren Bent’s mother misunderstood a fan’s accent or attempt at humour (which was suggested as a possible explanation in a comment posted here after our first report).

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Soapbox: a bumpy day in pieland

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Pete Sixsmith reflects on yet another disappointing day on the road, yet another dismal comedown when encountering humbler opposition immediately after heroics against the Premier League’s finest …

What does Arsene Wenger do when the Gunners have a Saturday blank? If he was listening to James Alexander Gordon at 5pm, he would have risked a wry smile as he heard the dour Scotsman intone “Wigan Athletic 1 Sunderland 0”.

In his summing up last week, he said that Sunderland needed to do better against the lesser sides in the League. It was relatively easy to work on and carry out a game plan against the top sides, but that had to be modified when the opponents were not as exalted as his club, said the Sage of North London.

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Darren Bent: an apology

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kroof
Even more depressing than the team’s after-the-Lord-Mayor’s-ball type of performance at Wigan was news that Darren Bent ‘s mother was racially abused at the DW stadium. And even more depressing than that, he says a Sunderland supporter was the culprit.

Bent vented his feelings in a message posted to his Twitter page after the game: “So we get beaten by Wigan and to make matters worse my mum gets racially abused by a Sunderland fan. I won’t stand for that.”

He apparently added for good measure that the offender “needs to hope I don’t find out his name or who he is”, and I don’t blame him.

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