Sixer’s Sevens: Tottenham Hotspur 4 SAFC 1. A nightmarish second half

Jake: 'the Hoff looked bewitched, bothered and bewildered the whole time'
Jake: ‘the Hoff looked bewitched, bothered and bewildered the whole time’

No Sixer at the match today, though he was watching, somewhere, and still provided the instant, seven-word verdict. Once again a shot from PVA ended up in the back of the net and this time there was no deflection, just a powerful low finish to a peach of a defence-splitting pass from Adam Johnson. The lead typically lasted all of 90 seconds when Lee Cattermole ‘got into a tangle’, to borrow from Jake’s description, and turned a manageable goal line clearance into a clumsy own goal. In the second half, bad substitutions by Big Sam produced a nightmarish debut for Jan Kirkhoff and, as team shape disintegrated, Spurs got another three to ruin all the work done earlier …

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Cheer up, Tottenham’s DeAndre Yedlin: lots of us had bad school reports

Monsieur Salut’s school record is littered with stern, sarky or downright contemptuous remarks from teachers and headmasters. ‘Could do better’, ‘doesn’t concentrate’, ‘not good enough for this school’. That kind of thing. So DeAndre Yedlin should take heart and learn from what follows, Charles Richards of The Spurs Report’s Q&A with Pete Sixsmith on how he’s done on loan at Sunderland. Mind, M Salut never took heed of the school reports so maybe that’s a big ask …

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Tottenham Hotspur ‘Who are You?’: a Newcastle-friendly, SAFC-unfriendly affair

Jake: 'we keep ourselves to ourselves'
Jake: ‘we keep ourselves to ourselves’

Here’s a man with no special desire to cultivate friendships among Sunderland fans. Charles Richards*, self-confessed posh Durham Uni type, responded to our request for a Tottenham Hotspur interviewee in a manner calculated to wind us all up. Loves Newcastle United, contemptuous of SAFC. He certainly wound up our star writer Pete Sixsmith, as you’ll see later today or tomorrow, but assures us it’s ‘all in the spirit of banter’. Charles runs his own fan site thespursreport and writes for another, The Tottenham Way. Now prepare to be offended …

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Arsenal, Spurs, Everton, Man Utd, Sunderland and the window of opportunity

Salut! Sunderland’s Pete Sixsmith can remember the time when the transfer window was just an empty space covered in an old potato sack. Now the latest window has been closed, Peter gives his thoughts on the last minute activity that brought a further three players into the club …

Sixer by Jake
Sixer by Jake

The great day has gone and Sky Sports can put Jim White back in the cupboard until the end of January. The gossip columns go quiet for a couple of weeks before the next batch of rumours start, while the Football League loan market opens next week. And to think that I once thought that the transfer window was a good idea!

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The post-Tottenham Soapbox: Trevor Francis’s Hong Kong phooey, PDC’s progress

Sixer photographed by M Salut, framed by Jake
Sixer photographed by M Salut, framed by Jake

Spurs fans came here in numbers, and also butted in at Monsieur Salut!s ESPN pages, to dismiss the result as a function of Sunderland fielding their best side – they haven’t heard the name Steven Fletcher – against a bunch of under-9s. Were they as weakened as the SAFC team that nearly snatched a point at Tottenham’s pleasant little stadium in May? Pete Sixsmith puts them in their place and administers a roasting to Sky’s drearily anti-Sunderland pundit …

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Le Parole di Paolo: beating Tottenham barely a start, satisfaction within reach

Jake seconds him ...
Jake relaxes, too, but will soon enough have a new banner for this feature …

A new title and a new-look Sunderland team are the orders of the day as Paolo Di Canio‘s first full season of post-match verdicts, as delivered in his over-so-exclusive e-mail to Monsieur Salut (and maybe tens of thousands of others), approaches. Thrilled with the performance that brought 3-1 victory over Spurs, PDC points out that we’ve achieved nowt just yet …

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