Apologies all for the ongoing site difficulties which M. Salut is trying to correct with little or no help from the hosts to whom he pays a substantial fee. I had thought that these were sorted but on my laptop at least, I am unable to either post or read comments. I have copied and pasted a comment already received from Dave at the foot of the article.
In the meantime, you can always have your say on anything that appears here, or for that matter any SAFC topics which do not, at Salut! Sunderland’s Facebook group. Click on any of the preceding four words. If you are told that you need to join the group, you can do so easily. Approval is very quick.
Jake does his bit for the seat change
Pete Sixsmith, enjoyed his mini break in the country formerly known as the Czech Republic, spending the weekend drinking beer and watching football, but was back in time for last night’s comprehensive victory at the Stadium of Light. He took up his normal seat in the East Stand but we are sharing reporting duties between us this year, with Bob Chapman our third contributor for those games neither of us gets to. So with Pete up and about taking the latest tabloid gossip to the good folk of Shildon before making good use of his bus pass, it is my turn to dust down the old soapbox with thoughts on the 5-0 drubbing of Tranmere Rovers.
NB: our technical problems have not been completely fixed. Readers cannot post comments. We are working on this.
In the meantime, you can always have your say on anything that appears here, or for that matter any SAFC topics which do not, at Salut! Sunderland’s Facebook group. Click on any of the preceding four words. If you are told that you need to join the group, you can do so easily. Approval is very quick.
Pete Sixsmith returned from a well-earned break to find the site laid low by technical issues and a team laid low by technical superiority.
Could a quick return to the Stadium of Light provide an opportunity for the team to recover? His seven-word, post-game text, not to mention the result, would seem to suggest it could.
Jake: ‘no messing this time … please’ NB: our technical problems have not been completely fixed. Readers cannot post comments. We are working on this.
In the meantime, you can always have your say on anything that appears here, or for that matter any SAFC topics which do not, at Salut! Sunderland’s Facebook group. Click on any of the preceding four words. If you are told that you need to join the group, you can do so easily. Approval is very quick.
In the Premier League, we moaned as Sunderland put in one rotten display after another. In the Championship, it was the same as, far from pushing for immediate promotion, we disintegrated as a side and almost as a club.
Last season, we whinged about all those draws. Yet we reached Wembley twice and nearly got back up again, gifted an own goal in the opening minutes of the playoff final only to devise a way of losing.
And this season, we find ourselves with a new manager rather earlier in the season than appeared in the script. And in 10th place after more rotten displays, most recently a 1-0 defeat at mighty Wycombe Wanderers.
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.
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.
Here are the last five of the clubs in League One apart from Blackpool, Bolton, Bury and Sunderland, who will arrive presently, by which I mean when I get round to it.
As ever, visiting fans are welcome to post comments, corrections, updates and their thoughts on their and other clubs’ prospects for the season.
WordPress seems happier with Win7 than Win10, and a change of computer has let me add more content and repost the report I did a few hours ago:
It was January 2017 when I last reported on this side of the Pennines, which is not surprising, given the season(s) – and close seasons – we’ve had recently. it’s a bit quieter now, so I thought it a good time to revisit before things get lively again. Some of the clubs I visited have improved their circumstances, others have seen their situations worsen and quite a few of them are now sharing a division with us, not all in the best of circumstances.
Indeed, some will make you wonder why all the fuss about us finishing fifth and missing out on promotion against Charlton, who themselves are not in the best of circumstances, given the owner is looking to sell and appears to have already given up on promotion, although he hadn’t ruled it out completely yesterday.
Charlton fans are welcome to post their thoughts but Charlton are not the issue today, the focus is firmly on the historic County of Lancashire…
Which football teams you have a soft spot for, and which you would cheerfully consign to oblivion, is not driven by rocket science. It could be as simple as a long remembered favour or slight. Ask John McCormick*: he should know …
Here are the last five of the clubs in League One apart from Blackpool, Bolton, Bury and Sunderland, who will arrive presently, by which I mean when I get round to it.
WordPress seems happier with Win7 than Win10, and a change of computer has let me add more content and repost the report I did a few hours ago:
(‘The stripes help’: Image by Yellow Book)