Sunderland

Salut! Sunderland’s welcome to George Dobson – a big midfielder and what’s more, we paid for him

by
George Dobson:a great photo, reproduced with the kind permission of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: at around 8pm, I switched on my phone after landing at Stansted, noticed the signing of George Dobson had been announced and prepared to write our usual welcoming piece on the train into London. Fat chance. The sun had come out and there were no trains. Nor any notice to that effect obviously visible in arrivals so passengers had to traipse all the way down to the platform only to be sent back to the terminal to queue for National Express tickets and then traipse one floor back down to locate the coach station. It was a grim ride into the capital. Probably unfair to blame Brexit but I’ll doubtless find a way. But here’s the delayed welcome …

Read more

Promotion poll: Sunderland vie with Portsmouth but can Burton, Lincoln or Doncaster make top six?

by

John McCormick, associate editor, writes: things have quietened down with our ‘who to follow’ poll, as we might expect. Portsmouth, Sunderland and Ipswich are clear leaders, with not much between them, after which we have Rotherham and Peterborough. Then comes Coventry, followed at a distance by Donny, Lincoln and Burton.

That’s interesting because on Wednesday over at  Roker Report, Nick Barnes, who knows more about football than I ever will,  identified Lincoln and Burton as teams that could mount a challenge to Sunderland, along with Ipswich, Portsmouth, Peterborough and Coventry. He didn’t mention Rotherham.

I could extend our watch list to eight clubs, even nine on the grounds that Donny are ahead of Lincoln and Burton in our poll, and I have added clubs during the season – Luton last season being the most recent – but it makes graphics difficult to follow. So I’m going to stick with six.

Read more

McGeady: Aiden and abetting a new Sunderland promotion push

by
McGeady: our best signing so far. Photo courtesy of safc.com

Monsieur Salut writes: we all love a marquee signing, the arrival at the Stadium of Light of Light of a game-changing player. I have no problem with bivouac signings, as our three new acquisitions so far, all frees, might be termed. As long as Jack Ross and his scouts have done their homework correctly, they may turn out to be important components of Sunderland’s forthcoming second go at getting out of League One. But the contract extension for Aiden McGeady is in a different league …

Aiden McGeady, indisputably one of League One’s classiest players last season, is staying at Sunderland.

Read more

Portsmouth then Sunderland, Ipswich, Rotherham, Peterborough and Coventry top our poll. But where are Lincoln?

by

On Friday we had over 3,000 visitors, followed by a quiet weekend. Not everyone took part in our top six poll  but over 1200 votes (not voters) have now been cast. That’s not bad, I suppose, for a League One fans’ site but I am expecting a few more will chip in before the season kicks off.

Early results suggest the headline I used then – for which I visited a couple of betting sites to find the promotion favourites – was on the right lines. Of the six clubs I named five are in the top spots. Lincoln (currently lingering in 8th place) are the exception with Sunderland, unsurprisingly, replacing them. There’s a gap – slight but quite evident – between the top three and the next three,  after which numbers drop off, so Lincoln and Doncaster, who made last season’s playoffs and now lie seventh, have quite a bit of ground to make up.

All of the clubs in the League received votes, which I’m taking to signify that we  managed a wide reach. It will be interesting to see if enough fans of so-called smaller clubs, which are predominantly towards the bottom of the poll, visit in large enough numbers to move their favourites upwards. Crowdwise, numbers are against them but we have only small numbers voting so you never know.

Read more

Ipswich or Portsmouth? Rotherham or Peterborough? How about Lincoln or Coventry? It’s your choice

by

Last season our punters got it more or less right and correctly predicted most of the top six. Luton were missed but that was mainly down to the Coventry Ninjas, whose hijack of last year’s poll pushed them (Luton) out of the top places.

Maybe the ninjas or another club’s fans will do the same again this season. As far as I’m aware the polldaddy vulnerability that allowed multiple voting still exists and all I can do is disable the ability of readers to see the results in real time. That might change how the poll coding works (it’s built-in and can’t be changed) but it takes something away. A pity, but there we go.

I’ve got a lot on for the next few weeks so I won’t be conjuring up a novel method of tracking and displaying our chosen clubs’ progress or the lack of it. All I’ll be doing is monitoring the accretion of points for now, though I might come up with something different later in the season.

As always, your comments are welcome. We hold posts for moderation but they do go up eventually, subject to meeting commonsense rules of decency, manners, libel etc.

Read more

Lee Cattermole out, another McLaughlin in as Sunderland preparations move up a gear

by
Catts: from reckless and hotheaded to steady and sensible

A commonsense end to a long-serving player’s Sunderland career or a shock announcement few saw coming: two ways of seeing today’s news that Lee Cattermole has left with immediate effect.

Cattermole’s departure makes sense because a League One club really should not be paying an injury-prone midfielder a reported £40,000 a week. In any case, financial fair play rules oblige SAFC to cut their wage bill.

Read more

Just Blackpool and Bolton, the financial ramble continues without Bury or Sunderland.

by


I expected to be finishing this series with a single post. It’s just not possible. While things have moved ahead with Blackpool, they seems to have stalled at Bolton and Sunderland still have to get out of the starting blocks. And as for Bury, their can has been kicked far down the road in the hope of allowing a solution that it reached the start of next season. Unfortunately, that only seems to have allowed more problems to build up, or at least existing ones to grow.
And with that the word length just kept getting bigger and bigger and the page length longer and longer. So once more I’ve decided to split the page and give you a where we’re at with Bolton and Blackpool and leave Bury and Sunderland to another day.

As ever supporters of both Blackpool and Bolton are welcome to chip in with their corrections, additions, thoughts, observations, even hopes, subject to the rules of decency, libel and so on. You maybe held for moderation but any posts meeting our standards do go up eventually.

Read more

Rotherham: where better to celebrate Sunderland’s promotion?

by
Get the vocal chords in order for another mighty effort


This time last year, we were wondering whether a May weekend in Southend would be our promotion party. We know what happened to that fond dream.

How do you all fancy Rotherham as the ideal place to celebrate a return to the Championship?

It’s just a provisional list, liable to change for international demands, congestion caused by cup ties and TV.

And it starts with a home game against Stewart Donald and Charlie Methven’s lifelong football passion, Oxford United.

We have no idea what kind of line-up will be available to Jack Ross for Aug 3. We do know the team will get a hearty backing with 22,000 season tickets already sold. And it is clear beyond doubt that after the disappointments of the season just ended, a good start will be expected.

Read more

Salut! Sunderland’s HAWAY award-winning entry and two noble gestures from Bristol Rovers and Walsall

by
Doug Shields before Rovers 0-4 Doncaster. ‘The only time I smiled that day.’ Click on the photo to see all Who are You?s in the season just ended

Monsieur Salut writes: by tradition, Salut! Sunderland reproduces the Who are You? interview that has won our top HAWAY award. There is a twist, and a much-appreciated one. Doug Shields, a Bristol Rovers fan and the author, said he would prefer his prize to go to ‘a decent charity in Sunderland’. The runner-up, Richard Hall (Walsall), immediately made a similar gesture, asking for a replica top to go to an inner-city Sunderland school, perhaps as a prize for its summer fete. There you have it: football’s antidote to the shame brought by lowlife hoodlums running amok in Portugal in pretence of supporting England.

I shall offer an Art of Football print – the Sunderland range can be seen here and is superb – to the newish Sunderland fans’ museum and am open to suggestions as to the school. If I receive more than one approach or recommendation, I shall draw a winning school at random (provided it broadly fits Richard’s geographical preference). Thank you, genetlemen …

Read more