We’ve gone three PL games without any forward scoring so it looks like the front line failings we’ve experienced for at least two seasons are destined to continue. Jozy will score one day but Fletch looks like he’s playing the wrong system and Wickham’s playing the wrong position.
This is one Pete Sixsmith prepared earlier, a jaundiced look at the dying phase of the transfer window …
We can now put out a full team of players bought or borrowed by Paolo Di Canio, with some to spare for the bench. It might involve a little flexibility on positioning, and PDC needs to draw on the inherited squad for his substitute goalie, but here’s how it could look:
Vito Mannone
Andrea Dossena, Valentin Roberge, Mobido Diakite, Ondrej Celustka
Charis Mauvrias, Ki Sung-Yeung, Cabral, Emanuele Giaccherini
Jozy Altidore, Fabio Borini
Subs: Keiren Westwood, David Moberg Karlsson, El Hadji-Ba, Duncan Watmore
John McCormick takes a long, cool look at the way young would-be footballers’ dreams of top-flight careers are nurtured and, all too often, dashed …
There have recently been comments that Martin O’Neill needed not only to get busy in the transfer window but also to start bringing in some of our academy players.
The latter may be wishful thinking. You may remember Goldy, on these pages, voicing early-season criticism of our academy’s attitude to young players. My own experience, gained when I talked to teachers and conducted pupil interviews in the North West, suggests that there is a problem but it’s not confined to Sunderland.
Pete Sixsmith breathes a huge sigh of relief as the window slams shut …
Six years ago, when Sky Sports News was on Freeview, I sat open mouthed as Roy Keane brought in 6 players on the same day. Connolly, Kavanagh, Miller, Varga, Wallace and Yorke all arrived in the proverbial frenzy of activity as the new manager realised that the likes of Arnau, Miller (T) and Caldwell were going to catapult us into Division One.
Pete Sixsmith gazes through the transfer window, sees little he truly fancies but wonders whether one or other of the …
So it ended without that extra striker coming our way. That leaves some of us feeling a little nervous, but Steve Bruce seems content with the business he’s done and with his resistance to the idea of panic measures to fill a temporary gap up front. Jeremy Robson looks at events elsewhere in the climax to one of the world’s craziest trade fairs …
The transfer window has always been controversial.
Whoever it serves hadn’t quite been figured out until this one. Most managers seemed to hold the view that it didn’t help anyone much as the prices demanded for players during January was artificially high and that the clubs’ finances would face less of a strain during the summer months.
Football clubs up and down the land are setting out their stalls for the January sales, and looking around in the hope of snapping up bargains of their own. Pete Sixsmith would cheerfully save them all the bother. It’s all enough to make him toy with the attractions of Shildon at home instead of the FA Cup this weekend …
So, the eagerly anticipated transfer window has opened at last. Excuse me while I yawn, while Sky Sports News presenters have 28 days of collective orgasms as they break the news that Gillingham have signed a Spurs Reserve who not even Harry Redknapp has heard of and while tons and tons of newsprint are wasted on “exclusive” stories that turn out to be so exclusive that they are pure fiction.
After Stoke,we welcome another footballing giant in Wigan Athletic. Pete Sixsmith may well give that one a miss for a ride on a potential Wembley bandwagon..
After the display we were forced to sit through on Monday night, only the most devoted followers of the Marquis de Sade can be looking forward to the visit of the Wigan pie eaters with any enthusiasm or expectation.
Wigan had an even worse result than we did, losing at home to serial bankrupts Notts County in an FA Cup replay, which prised 4,000 Latics out of their armchairs and into the DW stadium to watch open-mouthed as their team were dumped on.
That should reduce the Wigan following from the tiny to the miniscule, and should lead to a huge number of empty seats in the South Stand. Add to that the fact that there may well be an empty seat in the East Stand (Row 34, Seat 404) as I am caught on the horns of a footballing dilemma.