This is a deliberately brief edition of Guess the Score. It will receive the same sort of effort the players put into most games.
A prize will be awarded to the first reader who correctly predicts the `result of Sunderland vs Bournemouth. The choice will again be between a mini-version of the Nick Barnes Matchbook or a suitable mug designed in accordance with your allegiance. In other words, Bournemouth fans can enter, too.
Malcolm Dawson writes….Pete Sixsmith is the most resilient of the Salut! Sunderland regulars. While M Salut was tied up entertaining long distance relatives, John McCormick was fighting his own relegation battle in the Merseyside Chess League or whatever and I was occupied in my post retirement part time career opportunity in Lytham St Annes, Pete was at the Riverside suffering ……again! His seven word summation suggests that he and our manager differ in their opinions as to how tonight’s match went if this post match e-mail is anything to go by…
READ OLIVIA’S STORY HERE: https://safc.blog/2017/04/olivias-flying-high-up-in-the-sky-for-bradley-whatever-happens-at-leicester/ Olivia Hutchison no Longer needs to be introduced as the daughter of our regular contributor …
Forgive Monsieur Salut for feeling down. How can a Sunderland supporter be otherwise?
The poor response, in terms of readers, to yesterday’s pre-match package, a very good ‘Who are You?’ and another prize Guess the Score, suggested lots of us have simply lost interest.
We remain fans of the only club we’ve properly supported but we feel cheated at the same time. The club has let us down in a big way. We may well fear, as did our Boro interviewee, for life in the Championship. But here, for what it is worth, is my preview of the Tees-Wear derby for ESPNFC, cleverly headlined ‘Last Rites for Sunderland as relegation looms into view’ …
Let’s not beat about the bush. Wrinkly Pete’s rose-tinted crystal ball couldn’t save us and nor could my sister and her family’s Boro passions save them from the drop. We are both going down, leaving little more than pride – and avoidance of bottom place – at stake at the Riverside on Wednesday.
The maths are simple enough. We lose at Boro and Hull need only a win and draw from four games – even allowing for goal difference changes – to send us down. Say they drew two and lost two; we’d still have to win five of our six remaining games and hope Swansea and Boro didn’t stand in our way.
So Sunderland are effectively two defeats from relegation, one if Hull were to win just one more game and goal differences remained much as now. Middlesbrough are not much better off. In other words, both clubs are doomed to the Championship with only the mathematics left to complete. Dogs in this predicament are usually put out of their misery, but we have to await the formalities of our demise. Catherine Wilson*, our Boro interviewee and bassist/vocalist with ‘North London’s favorite grungey-indie superdupergroup’ Paintings of Ships, has accepted the inevitable, a relegation perhaps sealed by chairman Steve Gibson’s unwise loyalty towards Aitor Karanka …
Before heading off to Yorkshire for Rugby League, Pete Sixsmith decided to share his happy experience of attending a home …
Pete Sixsmith had his say with Gary Bennett on the radio as he left the Sunderland-West Ham game, had his say at Salut! Sunderland and then started to enjoy his Easter football programme. Read on for a groundhopper’s fascinating description of journeys to Yorkshire and across the Pennines to add another batch of grounds to those he has hopped between …
Sunderland look doomed and, in honesty, have done for weeks. Games that must produce points produce none or, as against Burnley and West Ham, just one. Here, James Reynolds, a freelance sportswriter, looks at the reality staring David Moyes in the face. We can question some of his conclusions (why, for example, would Moyes’s career be over if we went down?) but it’s mostly hammer hits nail on head …
With six Premier League games remaining, Sunderland need a miracle to avoid relegation to the Championship. David Moyes was thrown in the deep end a little at the start of the campaign but his side hasn’t been anywhere near good enough.
Monsieur Salut writes: awful defending cost Sunderland the goals that made the start of each half so disappointing but at long last, effort was matched by an ability to score. Wahbi Khazri added pressure on David Moyes to explain rationally why he has been used so little with his astonishing curler directly for a corner and Fabio Borini grabbed the second equaliser after Victor Anichebe caused problems in the West Ham penalty area. Ndong had early missed a sitter and, of course, even a win would not have been enough, but at least we say plenty of fight and Pete Sixsmith is right in his seven-word verdict in thinking we might well have taken all three points …
