Jake: ‘M Salut is dishing out enough mugs to be sure of going broke’
Monsieur Salut introduces another prize Guess the Score before embarking on a long trek through France, stopping for some disgusting but delicious andouillettes in Troyes on the way and arriving back in the UK on Wednesday night, ready for anything life throws at him (including tickets for Arsenal at home and Bournemouth away) …
Jake: ‘M Salut is dishing out enough mugs to be sure of going broke’
Let’s throw another mug into the ring and hope it doesn’t shatter into many pieces.
A prize Salut! Sunderland mug – design to suit the allegiance of the winner so Palace fans can enter – is on offer for the Palace game. No one was correct on the QPR score (except our QPR interviewee, John Crowley, and he didn’t post his prediction in the Guess the Score slot.)
This has nothing and everything to do with being a Sunderland supporter. My old colleague Charlie Whebell is a West Ham fan, though he’d never pronounce the H, as you’ll see below. Tonight he’ll be at what we call Upton Park and ‘ammers call the Boleyn – but only in spirit – as his team bids farewell to the old place with one last game, against Man Utd. He’s actually thousands of miles away in Abu Dhabi, where every Premier League game is screened, so will miss nothing except the incomparable feeling of being in the ground itself. He wishes he could be in the East End and probably considered using up his annual free flight home to make it happen.
These thoughts, posted by Charlie on Facebook, will resonate with anyone who remembers leaving Roker Park, anyone whose memories go back to an era before purpose-built stadiums, good as our version undoubtedly is, and also anyone who just values the idea of being utterly passionate about your club and whatever corner of the world it was where you were born or grew up or have an unbreakable bond with …
Every honest football fan knows he or she has occasionally howled at referees and linesmen only for the contentious decision to be proved to be flawless. Every honest footballer knows his entirely subjective view of an incident may not be accurate. And we all know footballers make many more costly mistakes than officials.
Yet weekend after weekend, there is the closest scrutiny of judgements seen as plain wrong, debatable or merely unpopular with one set of fans or the other.
As the season reaches the time when vital points are at stake, at both ends of all divisions and in decisive cup ties, controversy inevitably become more intense.
John McCormick writes: What do Jordi Gomez, Connor Wickham, Craig Gardner, Stephane Sessegnon and Patrick van Aanholt have in common? The answer is that they all scored or created goals on Saturday.
It doesn’t matter what League we’re in next season, we have to get rid of Patrick. He goes absent more often than Huyton’s schoolkids on a Friday. At least, that’s what I think, but what do I know about football? For a more informed opinion I’ll hand you over to Pete Sixsmith. Let’s see if he agrees:
Colin Randall writes: how many times over the years have we watched Sunderland lose and wonder how on earth we came away with nothing? After giving away a soft and sloppy goal just as we seemed to have the measure of West Ham, we proceeded in the second half to create one opportunity after another that Defoe, Rodwell and van Aanholt simply had to do better with. Even allowing for Andy Carroll’s thunderous shot against the bar, we ought to have won this game. The Hammers were fairly poor and this gave a grim impression of the West Ham Way. No one played truly badly for SAFC and Jan Kirchhoff deserved to be on the winning side but this was a game where, as Pete Sixsmith observes with his customary snap verdict, utterly crucial points were crying out to be seized …
Sunderland face of a whirlwind of games that will play a key part in deciding which division we play in come August.
It may not even be an exaggeration to suggest the season could well depend on the outcome of the visits to West Ham and Southampton, this Saturday and next, with Palace at home on Tuesday night.
David Blackmore*, our West Ham United interviewee, is the editor of the Blowing Bubbles print and online fanzine and can also be found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WestHamMagazine. He’s a level-headed Hammer who acclaims Payet’s genius but also the ability of smarter teams to close him down, sees great prospects of Bilic leading his club to a higher level and feels Sunderland’s support has won those crucial end-of-season points in our series of relegation scraps. He thinks we might snatch a 2-2 draw – and stay up again …
