Sunderland

Sunderland and the transfer window. How did we do?

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Jake: ‘is this a promotion strategy or avoidance of relegation?’


As I write, with a few hours to go, the transfer window has been a damp squib for Sunderland.

Maybe we’ll get Ross McCormack from Aston Villa. Maybe we won’t. Maybe there’ll be other signings, the timing smacking of desperation, the likely cost making us look a little League Two-ish.

Papy Djilobodji is confirmed as Dijon-bound on loan. Wahbi Khazri may end up leaving, too, also for a team, Rennes, that will be scrapping in or around the French Ligue 1 relegation zone. So much the better. If Kone goes too, I’ll shed few tears.

But again as I write, I don’t know who is going, other than the fairly useless Papy, and who may be coming.

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Three early games to shape Sunderland’s season

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After the worst campaign in recent memory for Sunderland fans, the rebuilding job has begun at the Stadium of Light this season as they dip into the Championship for the first time in just over a decade.

Simon Grayson picked up his first win of the season with a 3-1 win at Norwich after an opening weekend draw with promotion tipped Gary Rowett and his Derby County side, but have yet to win since. The last time the Black Cats dropped to the second tier it was an instant return to the top flight, winning the Championship with a stunning 17 game unbeaten run after the turn of the year.

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Barnsley vs SAFC Who are You?: ‘not a plaything for the mega-rich’

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Dan Tate: ‘what it feels like when Adam Hamill scores our second goal in the 3-1 playoff final defeat of Millwall – at least I think it was the second goal because the first was so early I’d have had a pie in my hand’

It may never have been quite like watching Brazil. But fans of big clubs can have no real concept of what it means to be part of the sort of occasion that gripped Dan Tate 14 months ago. As part of a 51,000-strong crowd, Dan experienced a great afternoon in the history of his club. He had willed himself to believe in a playoff final victory whoever his team, Barnsley, came up against and so it proved. Barnsley 3 Millwall 1 after a comfortable dismissal of Walsall in each leg of the League One semi-final. Dan is a season ticket holder at Oakwell and needless to say, will be there when Sunderland visit on Saturday. He ‘diplomatically’ predicts a draw …

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Barnsley vs Sunderland Guess the Score: the need to show we’re a Championship force

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Jake says: ‘have a go’

As Paul Summerside put it here earlier this week, Saturday’s game at Oakwell is a much more important test of Simon Grayson’s Sunderland than a 2nd league cup tie could ever be.

The result will not determine the course of our season. But the psychological impact of a good one, which means three points not one, would be huge. A bad does not bear thinking about, even this early in the season.

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Sixer’s Sevens: Carlisle 1-2 Sunderland. Bill Green honoured, our job done

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Jake: ‘it won’t always be pretty’

Beating Carlisle in the league cup, or what is now correctly called the Caraboa Cup (what, you may ask but I looked it up and they produce ‘energy drinks’), has a sting in the tail. We did our bit, winning 2-1. But you have to get up at some idiotic hour on Thursday morning to find out who Sunderland will play in the third  round.

 

The second round took us to Brunton Park, where supporters of both sides joined in one minute of applause for Bill Green, the Newcastle-born former captain of Carlisle United and scorer of their first goal in the 2-0 win at Chelsea that was followed by two more victories putting them briefly top of the First Division (sad to relate, they went down in bottom place!).

Pete Sixsmith drove west for this one. He was not greatly impressed, spotting more missed chances for Carlisle than us and feeling Lynden Gooch’s winner – a finish he described as ‘classy’, to Gooch’s delight (he ‘liked’ the relevant tweet) – effectively ‘got us out of the s***’.

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Grayson’s uphill struggle to mould a viable Sunderland squad

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… through the Championship, we’re on our way?

William Sundin, a media production graduate from Sunderland University (though strongly suspected of being an Ipswich supporter) takes another clinical look at SAFC’s fascinatingly complex fortunes and echoes the thoughts of a certain Sunderland hero that the defeat to Leeds exposed our limitations …

Sunderland have enjoyed a reasonably solid start to the Championship campaign though the rigours of playing with a limited squad appeared to catch up with them against Leeds.

Simon Grayson’s men were unbeaten heading into the match at the Stadium of Light. However, goals from Samuel Saiz and Stuart Dallas condemned Sunderland to their first defeat of the league progromme.

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The First Time Ever I Saw Your Ground (with or without Sunderland): Carlisle United

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The newly slimline Sixer …

Brunton Park is the latest stop in Pete Sixsmith‘s series* looking at his own earliest experiences of the teams Sunderland play and the grounds they call or called home. Carlise United can claim a fascinating club history, the remoteness of its location making gloryseeking support for bigger clubs less of a problem than elsewhere. Sixer’s introduction to the ground coincided with the appearance of a Sunderland hero but not a Sunderland team …


Brunton Park is one of the few grounds that I first went to without seeing Sunderland – although there was a Sunderland connection and that connection was the great Charlie Hurley.

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Carlisle Who are You? ‘when Shankly said ours was football’s greatest achievement’

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Mike

Colin Randall writes: our Carlisle United interviewee Mike Booth, a moderator at the Carlisle fans’ forum thecumbrians.net, says most people have a soft spot for Sunderland because watching Newcastle struggle – he’ll have enjoyed their first two results – is such fun. I only just suppressed the temptation to make that the headline.

Mike is too young to remember Carlisle’s season of glory, promoted to the top flight and top of the league after three games (but relegated all the same), but says people still talk about it …


Salut! Sunderland: What were your thoughts when you came out of the hat against us – ‘that’s a great draw ‘ or ‘not them again’?

Mike Booth: yeah I thought it was a good draw. Potential for a good crowd, and I’ve seen Sunderland have quite a few games in a short space of time, so this game might be seen as one where they can rest a few players, which could potentially lead to an upset.

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