Monsieur Salut’s Mac has just crashed, a long way from anywhere he can enforce the guarantee. Luckily he’d already found Tom Langton*, deep in Spain, to answer the Surs “Who are You?” questions. Tom runs the bar at his father Mark’s hotel and activity centre – get this: “the Sierra Espuna is a beautiful nature reserve in Southern Spain and probably the healthiest part of Europe”. Maybe our own Jake should book there to get over the trauma of new fatherhood. Exiled Spurs fans looking for a branch of the supporters’ club note: Mark’s your man in Spain. But he insists his son – who predicts a Spurs but a storming Sunderland finish – is the biggest Tottenham fan he knows …
Tottenham Hotpsur
Salut! Sunderland’s Week: honour at Spurs, points and a dog at QPR
Salut! Sunderland takes another look back over events of the past week, as reflected in our postings …
The White Hart Lane Soapbox: couldn’t quite scupper ‘Arry’s Spurs
Pete Sixsmith salutes a reasonable if losing performance at Spurs (though M Salut thinks he was unduly impressed by O’Shea), but then admits he has been looking at the fixtures. It gave him a nasty bout of nerves for Sunderland’s immediate future …
Martin’s Musings: full marks for effort at Spurs, but we’re goal-shy
Martin O’Neill voices praise for the team’s effort at Spurs, thinks we might have snatched something and rues our inability to score. He is right on all counts; we just weren’t quite good enough to maike promising spells matter …
Dear Colin,
We put a big, big effort into the game, I thought, before they scored and certainly in the last 25 minutes of the match.
Tottenham are a very fine side. Overall I’m disappointed that we didn’t get something from the game, particularly as it looked as though the storm had been calmed.
Sixer’s Sevens: Tottenham Hotspur 1 SAFC 0 – ‘nearly men’ caught short
This is where Pete Sixsmith captures the glory and shame, hope and despair, excitement and ennui of the Sunderland matchday experience. When, rarely, Pete is absent or delayed, a supersub does it for him and the seven-word verdict is preceded by an asterisk. Pete’s full analysis of the game will usually appear within a day or two.
At one point in the second half at White Hart Lane today, Pete turned and said: “We’re the nearly men.” Sessegnon had just made a promising run, only to be outmuscled as he worked his way towards a dangerous position. McClean came on and nearly had enough to beat his man and get in dangerous crosses. Nearly, but not quite enough each time to make an impact on a top three/four team. The sloppy pass – see Sixer’s verdict – was Wes Brown’s; it was not the only one by a long shot, but it was the one that created the opening for the winner. Yes, Spurs then missed an open goal; we’d done that in the first half, nearly making a brief good spell count. Not a terrible day; nearly a half decent one.
The full Sixer’s Sevens archive – see link below – sums up what all Sunderland supporters feel, from darkest gloom to sublime elation, in the words one who is usually there …
Dec 18 2011 Tottenham Hotspur (0) 1 SAFC (0) 0 One sloppy pass undoes a solid performance
Dec 11 2011 SAFC (0) 2 Blackburn Rovers (1) 1 Sheer perseverance gives MON vital winning start
Dec 4 2011 Wolverhampton Wanderers (0) 2 SAFC (0) 1 More points sacrificed through weak, sloppy defending
Tottenham v Sunderland: ordeals at the Lane, fun in the snow
At roughly this time last year, Salut! Sunderland pulled together some reminiscences of visits to White Hart Lane in previous seasons. The cold snap that saw snowfall in parts of Britain today – including a few flakes in London – brought back memories of a 3-3 draw in the bleak midwinter, a good enough excuse for looking at those past encounters again …
See also: The Spurs “Who are You?”: We’ll hammer you 4-1.
Not everyone knows this, and Spurs fans would just laugh anyway. But Sunderland have won the top flight title three times as often as Tottenham. And while the down side for us is that three of our six championships came in the century before last, and the most recent was 1936, they had to wait until 1951 for the first of only two.
Spurs v SAFC Who are You?: ‘top four beats staying above Arsenal’
No shortage of self-confidence on the Tottenham Hotspur front. Too big a club for Darren Bent and Martin O’Neill, home bankers versus us on Sunday and heading for a third top finish at least two places ahead of Arsenal. That’s as seen by Jamie Currie*, the man behind White Hart Pain site and a regular on Ian Wright’s Absolute Radio programme, Rock ‘N’ Roll Football. He did the honours here two years ago** and we welcome him back – even if he does casually predict a 4-1 outcome …
That first game of the season: Roker Park or SoL
Great minds … small minds … think alike … never differ. Colin Randall and Pete Sixsmith both thought of writing about the opening game and both found themselves wallowing in memories of long ago. Colin has a nicer pic to go with his than Pete’s old Soapbox image – but come back in a couple of hours for the essential Sixsmith preview …
Every so often, a comment attributed to a female SAFC fan appears in the sadly neglected Salut! Smiles slot where you currently find Danny Dichio down the left-hand column. Those comments are usually from the lips, or keyboard, of Claire Reidlinger, from the only Washington the world needs to know about. A lovely e-mail offering this pic – “me and the bairn and Filbert the Fox at the Leicester friendly for yer nice Salut thingy” – inspired these thoughts about opening games …
How the Salut! Sunderland jury voted
Honourable mentions, too, are due to our other shortlisted candidates – read the full list by clicking here – but here are the citations from our judges for their Top Three choices in the annual Salut! Sunderland awards …
So the shortlist for the Who Are You? competition stretched to 10 entries, chosen by me from the dozens published at Salut! Sunderland – more than the number of teams we played since there were often two or more contributors – during the 2009-2010 season.
Making a meal of it in north London – and catching Fabio’s eye (1)
Salut! Sunderland, while not caring enormously about international football, congratulates Darren Bent on his England call-up. Good for him, brings a little reflected glory to the club and may yet prove more meaningful than SuperKev’s inclusion in unSuperKev’s Euro 2000 squad. But there is unfinished Bent-related business. What was that about eating our words? Colin Randall prepares the dish, chooses the wine and sets the table …
Salut! is now officially split on the issue. In his excellent review of Saturday’s events at White Hart Lane, Pete Sixsmith said the penalty was right and so was the yellow, since red would have been harsh.
I finally saw the footage late last night. I still believe Gomes made a rash dive at Bent’s feet and that it was therefore a penalty waiting to happen. Except that Darren didn’t wait, and it – the foul – didn’t happen.