Who Are You?

Sheffield United Who are You?: The Full Monty, Ched Evans, miners’ strikes

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Dave Eyre: the Blade who lifted the Champions League trophy**

 

On a train somewhere during a long trip to the United States, our Sheffield United interviewee Dave Eyre* will try to find wifi access to events at the Stadium of Light. He predicts an uneventful season for both clubs, a win on Saturday for the Blades. United are an interesting club and Dave, an academic and folk music broadcaster, is an interesting man. These are fascinating and thought-provoking responses to the Salut! Sunderland questions though we can surely quarrel with his assertion that the United-Wednesday rivalry is more intense than Sunderland-Newcastle …

Salut! Sunderland:  So how will Sheffield United do on their return to the second tier and can they ever return to the top?

Dave Eyre: I expect this year to be one of consolidation. It’s taken a while – six years – to get back into this division. Looking at the money being spent by some clubs we will not be competing via the transfer stakes and buying our way further up. But we have a great academy with some superb prospects and if Huddersfield can do it why not? We have a history as a First Division/Premiership club; brilliant facilities ready for the Premier League; and the first ever goal scored in the Premier League was at Bramall Lane – Brian Deane against Manchester United. We won 2-1.

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Barnsley vs SAFC Who are You?: ‘not a plaything for the mega-rich’

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Dan Tate: ‘what it feels like when Adam Hamill scores our second goal in the 3-1 playoff final defeat of Millwall – at least I think it was the second goal because the first was so early I’d have had a pie in my hand’

It may never have been quite like watching Brazil. But fans of big clubs can have no real concept of what it means to be part of the sort of occasion that gripped Dan Tate 14 months ago. As part of a 51,000-strong crowd, Dan experienced a great afternoon in the history of his club. He had willed himself to believe in a playoff final victory whoever his team, Barnsley, came up against and so it proved. Barnsley 3 Millwall 1 after a comfortable dismissal of Walsall in each leg of the League One semi-final. Dan is a season ticket holder at Oakwell and needless to say, will be there when Sunderland visit on Saturday. He ‘diplomatically’ predicts a draw …

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Carlisle Who are You? ‘when Shankly said ours was football’s greatest achievement’

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Mike

Colin Randall writes: our Carlisle United interviewee Mike Booth, a moderator at the Carlisle fans’ forum thecumbrians.net, says most people have a soft spot for Sunderland because watching Newcastle struggle – he’ll have enjoyed their first two results – is such fun. I only just suppressed the temptation to make that the headline.

Mike is too young to remember Carlisle’s season of glory, promoted to the top flight and top of the league after three games (but relegated all the same), but says people still talk about it …


Salut! Sunderland: What were your thoughts when you came out of the hat against us – ‘that’s a great draw ‘ or ‘not them again’?

Mike Booth: yeah I thought it was a good draw. Potential for a good crowd, and I’ve seen Sunderland have quite a few games in a short space of time, so this game might be seen as one where they can rest a few players, which could potentially lead to an upset.

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The Leeds United Who are You?: ‘top six for us and SAFC’

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Kevin Ayscough with a miniature Leeds fan, his grandson Charlie

You’ll need to scroll down now if you want to know Kevin Ayscough‘s* link to Salut! Sunderland and why he thinks a certain Sunderland fan ought really be supporting Leeds.

Kevin is a down-to-earth United supporter who sees no point in harking back to his club’s glory days, though he says he still cannot work out how we made his trip home to Leeds such a miserable one on May 5 1973. He rates Simon Grayson highly and, even before this week’s results put us 6th and Leeds 7th, saw both clubs finishing in the top six – a re-run of 1963-64 would suit him and most of us, even if we’d want the positions reversed ….

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Sheffield Wednesday Who are You?: from dreading Portsmouth’s fate to good times again

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Dave Briggs: aiming high

Dave Briggs* is a Sheffield Wednesday fan who has seen good times, wretched times and better times. The good times presumably included seven years deejaying in Greece.

Last season’s playoff final defeat was a bitter disappointment but he relished the challenge for promotion after so much underachievement in recent years. Dave thinks we may need to be patient, too, and should not be too downbeat if we cannot make the top six at the first attempt. And he rather likes the three Owls players – Steven Fletcher, Keiren Westwood and Ross Wallace – with SAFC connections …

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Norwich Who are You?: ‘we couldn’t even cheat properly, but watch Fulham!’

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Gary Gowers

Towards the end of the 2015-2016 season, Sunderland went to Norwich and won 3-0 as part of the Big Sam race for survival. We stayed up, they went down. Before the game, we were able to introduce readers to one of the best Who are You? interviewees of the season, Gary Gowers*. So good were his replies that he took second place in the HAWAY awards – he never received his prize, but we are trying to rectify this now.

As Sunderland’s second Championship game takes us back to Carrow Road, it seemed an ideal opportunity to catch up again with Gary, the editor of http://norwichcity.myfootballwriter.com. Sit back for another terrific read in which he lays into the arrogance of City’s squad last season and expresses no surprise at our own predicament. He’d quite like Catts in Norwich colours but is distinctly cool on James Vaughan and Lewis Grabban. All the same, he predicts a top six place for Sunderland (and for his own side) …

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The Sunderland vs Derby County ‘Who are You?’: a man in the know

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Nick Britten: not really as handsome as he seems. And his wife, charming as she is, likes the colour of the shirt stripes

Monsieur Salut writes:
Nick Britten* has written a column for the Derby County matchday programme for 16 years. I think we both wrote for our respective club programmes about the time he rescued me from the A38 (update: oops – Nick corrects me and says it was the A50, and he should know) after the Sunderland SAFCSA London branch’s dozy coach driver got us all stuck in the not-very-hard shoulder mud on the way back from the Old Trafford FA Cup semi-final vs Millwall.

Oh, and he married a Mag. Read on for a knowledgeable Derby fan’s view of how his team and ours stand at the start of the new season, his thoughts on Grayson and his predicted scoreline for the opening game at the SoL on Friday night (maybe skip that bit) … but all in all, a great start to the 2017-2018 Who are You? series

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Salut! Sunderland’s Watford star and his HAWAY-winning ‘Who are You?’

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Del Day: ‘hey love, was thinking we could name our daughters Blissett’

This is the prize-winning interview with Del Day, a Watford supporter, in Salut! Sunderland annual HAWAY awards. Del took first place – as you can read here – and has expressed a preference for the £50 voucher from Classic Football Shirts (‘I’ll get that ’89 away shirt for my wife – only kidding, it’s the kit she hates most!’) … bravo Del, and here’s your interview all over again …

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Salut! Sunderland’s HAWAYs: Watford finish top ahead of Chelsea and Bournemouth

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The deed is done. Another series of Who are You? interviews with opposing supporters has produced winners. Read on to see who the judges chose, and why ….

 

The judges have spoken. This year’s winners of the HAWAYs – awards for the Highly Articulate Who are You? interviews conducted through each season with fans of Sunderland’s opposing clubs – are announced today.

And in clear top place is Watford-supporting Del Day, followed by Chelsea’s Ray Knight and Bournemouth’s Tom Latchem.

Salut! Sunderland is, as ever, enormously grateful to the prize sponsors – Classic Football Shirts, When Saturday Comeshttps://shop.wsc.co.uk and Art of Football, and the gallery shows appropriate products each offers – and will simply offer Del his choice of the three. Ray gets second choice, leaving Tom with the remaining prize.

If the mood holds until the end of this article, there will be a special award from Salut! Sunderland funds for another deserving contender. But the truth is, as Jake’s caption makes clear, that the strength of the Who are You? series – see the full season’s entries here – is the quality of the responses we receive from the supporters who agree to participate.

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Chelsea Who are You?: (2) advertising on men’s shirts, shortness of Sunderland skirts

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Sid and Robin at the Vikings Stadium in Minneapolis ahead of a Chelsea friendly against AC Milan

One of the many joys of the various seasons’ editions of ‘Who are You?’ has been the way it has unearthed sparkling anecdotes, unexpected encounters between supporters, or supporters and players and/or officials and fascinating details of people’s lives. David Millward* has been here before, telling us about his allegiance to Chelsea but, much more interesting, recounting the story or why everyone calls him Sid. An uncle was the British bandleader Sid Millward (of Nitwits fame, no less) and the tale is told here .. Sid is now in the USA from where he sends this welcome set of answers to our questions, thus ending the 2016-2017 series. We learn, for example, that he was dumb-struck by the shortness of girls’ skirts on a cold Wearside night and also how much he loathes the sight of sponsorship advertising on players’ tops …

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