salut! sunderland

Steve Bruce: welcome to our world (1)

Salut! Sunderland has said it before. We are not a sports news agency and have no wish - or ability - to compete with mainstream news media or newsy websites. Our role is different and it doesn't take too much scrutiny of the archives to see that.

But the appointment of a new manager is an event of such significance for our great club and its even greater supporters. So let us extend a warm welcome to Steve Bruce, who tonight becomes not only that manager but also our favourite Mag.

Bruce is a complete professional and will neither be distracted by his history as a Newcastle United man nor reinvent himself as a lifelong Mackem who would like nothing better than to see the Mags descend another division or two.

Our most recent experiences of Barcodes at Sunderland are not encouraging: Lee Clark's T-shirt, Michael Chopra's unmissable miss against Toon. But we got plenty of good work from Clark beforehand, gloried in Bob Stokoe's finest hour, saw Chopra score a goal against someone else that played a huge part in keeping us up last seasom and could easily dig up plenty of names from the past to show that people in football can act as adults and properly serve the hands that feed them.

So Bruce starts with a substantial benefit of the doubt, our heartfelt wishes for him to succeed and, if Pete Sixsmith agrees, a promise not to call him Mrs Doubtfire again, at least in the forseeable future.

And we rather liked this, from Kaveh Solhekol at The Times website: extracts of a piece on the six things Steve must do ...

Forget about Newcastle United

Bruce has made no secret of the fact that he supports Newcastle, but most Sunderland fans are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt ...

Attract the right players

Bruce is expected to have up to £50 million to spend on new players, although in reality he may get less than half of that to spend this summer. That should not be a problem for a manager with good contacts around the world ...

Hold on to what he has got

Sunderland players such as Kieran Richardson, Dean Whitehead and Kenwyne Jones will be linked with other clubs ... Bruce has to decide whether to cash in or keep his best players. The futures of Craig Gordon and Paul McShane will also need to be sorted out.

Plan to stick around

Bruce has been a manager for 11 years but he has already changed jobs six times ... Sunderland fans will have every right to be angry if he does walk out because he has everything a manager needs – money, rich owner, sensible chairman, loyal fans, modern stadium ...

Put his arm around Anton Ferdinand

Great things were expected ... but so far he has done little to justify his £8 million price-tag after a promising start ... Bruce will need to work the same magic that he used on Titus Bramble at Wigan to turn Ferdinand into a top-class defender.

Answer his phone

Steve, if your phone’s ringing and Ellis Short’s name comes up on the display, take a deep breath, press answer and say, “Hello, Mr Short. What can I do for you?”

For the full article, follow this link.

Steve Bruce: reports of congestion

As we await what now appears to be the inevitability of Steve Bruce's installation as manager of Sunderland, the news from Wigan itself is that we should be prepared for quite an influx from the JJB, or DW (Dean Whitehead?) as it will be known next season.

This is what Bernard Ramsdale**, our award-winning man with his ear to the ground has to say:

Reports from people in the know at the club are convinced that SB will be moving to the Stadium Of Light, taking all of his backroom staff with him. These will include Nigel Spink as goalkeeper coach and Eric Black as his number two. It also includes an extensive, and very successful scouting team. (Palacios, fourteen million pounds and Valencia, 15 million pounds for an outlay of six million isn't too bad is it)

And this:

The imminent arrival of Steve Bruce as Sunderland manager could have catastrophic consequences for Wigan Athletic.

Reports of Bruce wanting to take Lee Cattermole to the Stadium of Light have surfaced and the fans of the Latics can also expect Bruce to make a bid for Titus Bramble as well according to reports in the Daily Star.

The loss of Bruce may well be overcome depending on the club's replacement manager but chairman Dave Whelan must be concerned about the possible loss of two of the clubs best players and the sooner things are brought back to normality at the DW Stadium, the better.

Two thoughts:

The owner speaks: Ellis less Short on words than before

Another sobering assessment of the season is nearly ready to appear as the second of Salut! Sunderland's end-of-term reports. Meanwhile, amid denials that Drumaville consortium members ended up losing on their investments (everyone received a "respectable" return, according to Niall Quinn, a "modest" one according to them), Ellis Short* has spoken ...


Ecstasy, relief, gratitude to the fans and, in defiance of instructions from Niall Quinn to say how far Sunderland AFC can go, a willingness to stipulate a top 10 finish next season as the first step on that route.

That, in short and in Short's own words, is Ellis, newly elevated to 100 per cent control of the club.

Sixer's Sevens Special ... SAFE!!!!!!!!

***** see also Toon truly Doon *****

AND some restrained, non-gloating images - utterly priceless - at Ready to Go

SUNDERLAND SAFE ... TOON DOON with BORO ...

... from the SoL and the south of France, both Pete Sixsmith - surely, I thought, that's him above but it's not* - and Colin Randall did their bits to keep Salut! Sunderland abreast of momentous events.

But Villa earned our undying affection by sending Newcastle United crashing deservedly out of the Premier League.

Minutes after the final whistles sounded everywhere, Salut! Sunderland passed the 1,000 mark for hits so far today - helped hugely by visits from fans of other clubs after our feature on the Who Are They? awards - and then Niall Quinn announced that Ricky Sbragia had stood down as manager but had a guaranteed future at the Stadium of Light if he wanted it ...

Danny's our boy

Consider the mess we're in and you could come up with a decent argument in favour of delaying making the player-of-the-season award until our fate is clear.

Stay up, especially if we can somehow manage to do so in style, and enough people will stop behind at teatime on Sunday to make Danny Collins feel special as he collects his totally deserved honour, matched by a similar award - for the second consecutive season - in the supporters' poll. Go down and a discreet handover - and handshakes - in the players' bar would probably suffice.

But no, it will happen before the Chelsea game kicks off. It is not a huge misjudgement, but it seems like a misjudgement all the same.

Lads v Chelsea: what's the likeliest outcome - 0-4, 4-1, 1-0, 4-2?

So we saved the biggest, scariest matchday of the season for last. The performance at Portsmouth reinforced doubts about our ability to claw our own way out of trouble. But Colin Randall doesn't need to think back far to a time when we were beating Chelsea for fun ...

Prizes are being solicited, and winners chosen, in the great Salut! Sunderland "Who are They?" awards, to be presented to the writers of the best previews contributed this season by supporters of opposing teams.

But no prizes are offered to readers who can identify the two consecutive seasons in which games between Sunderland and Chelsea ended as above.

Come back soon after the season ends for news of the awardwinners. Come back tomorrow for a Chelsea fan's preview - included as a late entrant for the judges - of Sunday's game.

And savour the above clip as a reminder of better times for Sunderland AFC before reading on ...

What price us doing it for ourselves?

So what is Djibril feeling this morning? Anguish at Olympique de Marseille's spectacular failure last night - losing 3-1 at home to Lyon (see it below) and now looking unlikely French champions - or a told-you-so thought or two about OM's stupidity in not having kept him to be sure of success?

Amid the debris of OM's weekend, I came across the name of Anthony Le Tallec, who scored twice for Le Mans in their game against OM's rivals for the title, Bordeaux. Le Mans still lost 3-2 and remain a bit like us, nervously looking over their shoulders at the bottom three places.

But Le Tallec - pictured at the French football blog Pleine Lucarne - obviously has something we saw little of at Sunderland since he also got a goal for Le Mans a few weeks ago against Lyon. I stand to be corrected* but remember only one for us (against Fulham in our solitary home win when we last went down); three in a month or so against top three sides, albeit in France, suggests a man who knows where the goal is.

* And have just been corrected. At the Blackcats forum, Terry McLoughlin tells me he scored three League goals, one FA Cup goal and one League Cup goal for us. Mick Gouldings adds: "Actually, I believe he was top scorer, or joint top scorer for us for the season, with something like 4, 5 or 6 goals - most of which were in the League Cup."

Thanks!

... to Fulham, Villa and Bolton for doing all we would have wanted.

15 Portsmouth 36 -20 38
16 Sunderland 36 -17 36
17 Hull 37 -24 35
18 Newcastle 37 -18 34
19 Middlesbrough 37 -28 32
20 West Brom 36 -29 31

Lasses gunned down

Pete Sixsmith originally said the Sunderland women's team had lost the FA Cup final against Arsenal by 2-0, so it brought some consolation to check the itv.com website and find that unlike the Lads yesterday, the Lasses were able to pull one back right at the end.

Let's hear it for the lasses

The Man City game was my last before leaving the home of City's benefactors, Abu Dhabi, to return to Europe. I had hoped for a special performance to mark my final day, while here, of Sunderland football. It came, but not from the Lads...

That feels more like it. No more effete, elitist notions of 11th or 12th top safety. All thoughts of "moving up to the next level" put on hold. Another game + another display of kamikaze defending + another punchless quest for goals = another defeat = another desperate relegation scrap ...

There'll be plenty from Pete Sixsmith on all that. So let's get in first by congratulating Sunderland Ladies - pictured above, courtesy of Sunderland WFC - on what The Guardian elected to call "the surprise of the season": reaching the women's FA Cup final with a 3-0 win over Chelsea at the Stadium of Light.

This line from the official site of the women's team says it all:
Sun 22 Mar Chelsea H FA Cup Stadium of Light 2.00pm 3-0 Gutteridge; Williams (2)