Watford

Sixer’s Sevens: Sunderland 1-0 Watford. PvA’s super finish brings precious win

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Jake: ‘great strike from that PvA kid’

https://safc.blog/2016/12/sixers-sevens-sunderland-1-0-watford-pvas-super-finish/

Monsieur Salut writes: as significant, almost, as the three precious points from this 1-0 win, was the vast improvement in the play of my man of the match Jason Denayer and the often (and rightly) criticised Adnan Januzaj. The goal came from a splendid Januzaj-Defoe-van Aanholt move and PvA’s finish was sublime. This is where you come to find Pete Sixsmith‘s instant seven-word verdict; there’ll be more to come on this match …

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Sunderland v Watford Guess the Score: last prize edition of 2016

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See these (above) and other Art of Football prints by clicking anywhere on this caption

Successive defeats have dumped Sunderland straight back at the bottom after all the promise of our mini-revival.

 

Most of us get fed up with being told this or that match is “must win”. We could beat Watford handsomely and then embark on a long losing streak sending us down by February or March.

 

Equally, we could lose and then shock football by taking point off not only Burnley but Manchester United and Liverpool, too.

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Sunderland, Hull and ‘Boro descending; Watford rising; Palace, West Brom, Burnley and Bournemouth on the level

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John McCormick: bored
John McCormick: stats is thirsty work

During the close season we gave readers the opportunity to select their relegation favourites from the entire Premier league. Then we asked readers to select three candidates from the eight clubs which came top.

By  the season’s start some 3,500 votes had been cast in our relegation poll

Hull were firm favourites to go down, with Burnley and Sunderland giving the North a full house. Watford weren’t far behind Sunderland, then came ‘Boro, Bournemouth and West Brom, followed by one hundred votes  for “another club” and finally Crystal Palace, whose 67 votes (we got three times as many to become third favourites) must surely mean safety for them.

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Take pity on Hull, Burnley and Sunderland, all doomed before a ball is kicked.

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John McCormick: bored
John McCormick. Impartial, as always

As the days went by our  “who’s doomed” poll slipped down the “Salut”front page until it dropped off the bottom like a relegated team.

By then over 3500 votes had been cast. Most came in flurries in the first couple of days and, although I suspect a strong contingent of Sunderland fans cast votes and tried to move us in the general direction of safety, the positions of the eight chosen clubs didn’t change, and nor did the percentages to any significant extent.

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Hull, Burnley, Bournemouth, Middlesbrough, Watford, Sunderland, West Brom or Crystal Palace. Choose your three

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John McCormick: bored
John McCormick. Impartial, as always

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.

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The people have spoken: Hull, Burnley and Bournemouth to leave the union

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John McCormick:
John McCormick. Impartial, as always

Would you believe that some people, somewhere, think Man Utd  will be relegated? And that others say the axe will fall on Spurs, Chelsea, or Man City. Some even say Arsenal will go down.

That’s democracy for you, so please, please, no histrionics, vitriol or gratuitous insults. There have been enough of them these past few weeks and it’s time for civilised behaviour between gentlefolk, like we always get when discussing football.

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Relegation poll: Middlesbrough, Hull or Sunderland? Arsenal and Manchester Utd? Vote now

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John McCormick:
John McCormick. reading the past, looking to the future

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’.

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