A very rushed posting but a very warm bienvenue to Sunderland’s latest francophone recruit, the Gabon international Didier Ndong from Lorient, for a fee of 16 millions euros, however many pounds that converts to post-Brexit.
Safc.com tells us he has joined on a five-year deal as David Moyes’s seventh arrival of the summer. That he came from the same club as Lamine Kone does not mean he’ll be demanding a transfer or new contract by Christmas.
Bill Taylor remembers someone says football becoming like watching their Italians play your Italians. If he is right about the authorship of the quote – he thinks Len Shackleton may have said it – and a quick internet search did not help – imagine what Shack would have made of today’s Premier League. Bill wonders whether it’s time to acknowledge that when we shout for our team, we’re really shouting for ourselves …
Too much is never enough – songwriter Jim Steinman
Whore (verb): to compromise oneself for money
Perhaps we’ve been doing this all wrong…
A popular question for visiting writers of Who Are You is, “Club or country?” [It was a stock question but you remind me I have not asked anyone in ages – Ed]
I don’t remember anyone ever putting country first. This might, I’m beginning to think, be a mistake.
A point at Southampton is always a good return. But for the third time in four seasons – the odd one out leaving us a little humiliated – Sunderland lost out on an important win because they could not defend a lead. SAFC were the better side in the first half, recovered from a second half loss of dominance to take the lead through Jermain Defoe’s penalty but could not keep the Saints out for the remaining minutes … Pete Sixsmith will fill in into more detail about his trip down south in due course but this is his instant verdict ..
Not quite 14,000 souls got along to the Stadium of Light for the traditional empty-ground start to a League Cup campaign. Pete Sixsmith was one of them but said, bluntly: ‘For those quizzing, reading, walking or just plain breathing, you missed NOWT.’ But we won, and now have a 3rd Round tie at QPR to contemplate … plus, some time today, the completion – assuming the medical went well – of our signing of the Atlético Madrid fullback Javier Manquillo …
The loss of Lamine Koné would not only be a huge blow to Sunderland just as we were all hoping for a much better start to the season. If the fans’ worst fears are justified, it would also threaten to bring David Moyes’s honeymoon period to an abrupt end …
STOP PRESS UPDATE: Fans spoke to Koné after training today and the player said he had been “promised a new contract”, reinforcing his agent’s comment that none had been offered. When asked if he would like to remain at SAFC, he replied: “Yeah.”
While thanking Sunderland AFC for kindly sending an image of the new, rather impressive away top, I added a postscript: “Seeing who is wearing it makes me want to cry!”
It was only the slightest of exaggerations.
It was June 12th when I first put up this season’s relegation poll and July 1st, when the transfer window opened, that I gave you the preliminary results.
Every Premiership club received some votes. Man Utd got thirteen. Spurs and Arsenal (last relegated in the year the Royal Flying Corps established its first airfield) both got ten. Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea received six each, as did Stoke. West Ham were the second best fancied team, with four votes, while Everton received only two votes and are thus deemed most likely to stay in the top division (something they have managed every year since the end of rationing) but not entirely safe.
Given such wishful thinking I had to do some winnowing so I chose 100 votes as the cut-off, which gave me a reasonable number of 8 clubs to watch, and you can see the results in the title above.
With no interest in the final of the European Championships later this evening, Deputy Editor Malcolm Dawson‘s thoughts have centered …
I’m getting a bit tired of the title (and Monsieur Salut should apologise to any reader lured here by thoughts it was a poll on religion; the word inexplicably replaced relegation in the headline when published and still appeared some time later at the newsnow.co.uk site) .
But just because we have some decent players, led by one of the Premier League’s most experienced managers and backed by a tremendous crowd, we can’t assume we’re safe.
Our record is not good. We’ve been one of the survivors for too many seasons and we can’t take anything for granted. Even now there will be some fans somewhere rubbing their hands as they look at the fixtures and thinking ‘Sunderland, that’s an easy three points’.
It’s never over until the fat lady sings. With a strict exercise regime and sensible dietary arrangements, Pete Sixsmith is well on his way to becoming a much slimmer version of the Sixer we know and love. Let’s hope it doesn’t affect his voice or his writing, as Adele reportedly fears could happen to her. Having endured some of the worst football of his half century of following Sunderland, Pete shared the general appreciation of a vastly improved second half of the season and the pulsating finish. Here is his end-of-season review, which ends the series.
See other contributions to the series at https://safc.blog/category/end-of-season-reviews-2016/
Win a trip to the Euros … read on
Roy Hodgson has probably worked out where Sunderland is on the map but not clearly enough to make him select an in-form striker, who grabbed an astonishing tally of 15 Premier League goals despite playing for a team that spent most of the season in the bottom three.
So no room for Jermain Defoe at the Euros 2016 in France. Roy did include in his provisional squad a well-known Championship player, Andros Townsend, and a man who doesn’t quite match Jermain’s standards of clean living, Jack Wilshere.
And SAFC fans who turn out at the Stadium of Light on Friday may well see Jordan Henderson, long lost to us as a player but still a fan, in the England friendly vs Australia. Since Roy’s a linguist, this link helping him find our ground is in French.