Another interesting facet of Christmas is looking through the TV film listings to see which ones apply to SAFC. Of course, The Great Escape made its customary appearance and here’s hoping we can celebrate our very own in May.

With regard to Anthony Stokes (rumoured to be interesting Derby and Wolves) I looked for John Goodman’s film, Arachnophobia but no sign of it, while there was one for Joey Barton as James Cagney’s 50 Years in Sing Sing cropped up. Grant Leadbitter may have enjoyed Local Hero while our own Pete Postlethwaite look alike Danny Higginbotham might have got a thrill from Brassed Off. Here’s hoping that we aren’t at the end of the season.

But the real highlight was an outing for Sergio Leone’s epic western The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. When it came out in the late 60s it was an iconic film and I remember queuing outside the old ABC in Holmeside to see it. Apart from Morricone’s fabulous score, the title has been a gift for writers ever since and never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I hereby take advantage of it.

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Do not get too excited, but if Michael Carrick can choose the 2007 festive period to end a losing sequence of games at the Stadium of Light, perhaps we can break a duck of our own.

In matches this season against teams I place in the North-west Midlands – OK, plus the North West (Blackburn) – we have mustered No Wins, No Draws and Seven Defeats and conceded 20 goals, scoring a mighty two in reply (thank you Dwight and Grant for your consolations).

This sorry record comes from losing narrowly and heavily to Man Utd, embarrassingly to Wigan, narrowly (but comfortably) to Blackburn, unluckily to Man City, decisively to Liverpool and catastrophically to Everton.

Having just seen Spamalot at the Palace Theatre in London, I am prepared to borrow from lowbrow art and Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.

Despite my downbeat footnote to Sixer’s Sevens, I look forward to the Lads giving me one hell of a shock on Saturday. If Sunderland do beat Bolton, I will be delighted to find myself forced into making the promised apology for my pessismism. And our run of eight in this geographical mini-league would then look like this:

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*** And congratulations to the BBC (and Sunderland)’s Martin Emmerson, and his wife Julia (Julia Barthram of Tyne Tees TV) on the Christmas Eve birth of their baby daughter, seen with Julia above. The little lass is as yet unnamed though there has been bidding on Abigail, Eleanor and Olivia. It will be at least nine years before she can hope to be good enough to play for the Lads, and even that presupposes the Lads get no better in the meantime. But she can make another appearance here just as soon as Martin sends a photo of her suitably clad in Red and White.

Salut! Sunderland‘s lines of communication were about as effective yesterday as a back four reading Whitehead-McShane-Higginbotham-Collins, about as a sharp as a Sunderland front two. Where, we were reduced to wondering until the real Sixer’s Seven could finally be posted, do we go from this mauling? Pete Sixsmith answers the bleak Christmas question

Over my many years on this planet I’ve had a fair few Christmas’s that have been spoiled.

There was the year when the Hornby Dublo train refused to work leading to tantrums and tears at 7am (and I was only 36 at the time). Or the time my father was given a turkey by a musician pal of his and we woke up to the smell of a rotten, putrid bird stinking the kitchen out.

A good Christmas dinner of sausages, bacon and veg ensued for us, and cold shoulder for my dad from my mother.

As I’ve got older I have become rather sanguine about the Christmas festivities. I admire Scrooge and his refusal to give into the rampant commercialism that clogged up a Victorian Christmas – all those oranges and home made dolls just make people soft – but I do enjoy a restful 25th. with friends and then look forward to a couple of games on Boxing Day.

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At least we’ve an easy one next
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Pete Sixsmith sees no reason to offer Christmas cheer to Steve Rubery, the linesman whose seasonal gift to Reading was a winning goal. But he doesn’t blame crazy decisions by match officals for our deeper woes.

So this time it’s a linesman who deals us a killer blow. It is worrying to see a human being with the eyes of a hawk that has super-duper 20/20 vision wasting his time on the Premier League line.

Surely with eyes this good he should be looking for nuclear weapons in Iran or wandering the countryside finding misplaced sewing implements in farmers’ winter fodder storage heaps.

But again, the inefficiency of the officials does not disguise the fact that we turned in another disappointing performance. We play without conviction and without the feeling that we can actually take hold of a game and dictate it.

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In common with many Sunderland supporters, this website may occasionally have given the impression of regarding Alan Shearer as a smug, humourless Mag incapable of passing fair judgement on any issue concerning SAFC.

Salut! Sunderland has quite possibly been slow in the past to deplore childish terrace chants casting assorted slurs on his character.

It is time to set the record straight. In ensuring that for a second successive weekend, Match of the Day should draw attention to gross injustices by match officials against Sunderland, Mr Shearer showed himself to be an entirely reasonable and just man.

Hunt’s goal for Reading, he proved using computer technology, was just as much not a goal as Collins’s header a week before had been a legitimate goal.

Sorry and all that, Alan, at least for now.

This does not bring back the three points stolen from us by outrageous decisions at the ends of both Aston Villa and Reading games. Nor does it alter the fact that SAFC are a desperately poor side in dire need of an injection of Premiership quality.

But you cannot have it all.

It was half time at Elm Park, in the deeply miserable Sunderland end of the tatty old Reading ground, when Barry Emmerson turned to me.

“Flaming two nil down to this lot,” he said, though flaming was not the adjective he chose. “What do you want to happen next? We come back in the second half and get a lucky draw, but know we’re utter crap? Or we get hammered 4-0 so Reidy and the board know they’ve got to get their fingers out?”

There was no comeback. Barry’s obvious preference was the precise outcome. On the day, the one tiny consolation was that Kevin Phillips, coming back from injury, was sent on as a sub and at least peppered the Reading goal with shots. You could see, even on that bleak day to be a Sunderland fan, that he might have what it takes.

It was also a bleak day to be Peter Reid (pictured courtesy of A Love Supreme) or anyone else travelling on the Sunderland team coach. SuperKev was among the players who who would never forget the hostile send-off they got from fans who had spent good money only to be cheated by the club they adored.

Brian McNally wrote in the Sunday Mirror:

Sunderland, meantime, suffered a stunning 4-0 setback away to struggling Reading. The Elm Park side were not even at full strength – yet they could have won by more, and that sparked angry scenes among Sunderland’s travelling army of loyal fans. Chants of “Reid out” led to the manager fleeing the ground via a side exit. Earlier an angry Reid laid into his players. “They short-changed us,” he said. “Our fans deserve better.”

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Steve Bennett, it is fair to assume, is not a name to be found on Roy Keane’s late Christmas card list. But, says Pete Sixsmith, do not run away with the idea that we actually deserved to win

Can anyone else pass?
Picture: Peadar O’Sullivan

The referee, in the end, cost us two points. But that situation has been well dealt with in Colin’s excellent piece and the subsequent comments.

Suffice to say, everyone I have spoken to is in agreement that if Terry had headed that ball in, it would have been a goal and if Etuhu had committed a foul like that on Hargreaves at Old Trafford, he would have had first use of the soap and the likes of Lineker and Hanson tut-tutting their way through MOTD’s 1 and 2.

So, let’s deal with the football because shocking referees should not distract us from the fact that we did well to get a point from a game against a <a href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/F8940649?thread=4890323
“>moderate Premier League side who are going through a sticky patch.

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Danny Collins: the nearly man
Picture: Peadar O’Sullivan

A scoreline of Sunderland 3 Aston Villa 1 would have been flattering in the extreme. For a start, we don’t actually score three goals in the same game. And today we played for only the first 15 and last 10 minutes.

Both of the disallowed goals, Stokes’s in the first half and Collins’s in the final seconds, may have been correctly ruled out by Steve Bennett. Stokes was offside so we can probably eliminate my use of the conditional “may”, though either Jones or Wallace should already have buried the ball in the Villa net for a 2-0 lead before his diving header.

As for the “winner”, I have seen it twice, which Bennett had not when he blew for a push. It seemed a good goal to me and to the neutral standing by my side. Repeated playbacks could prove us wrong. And in any case, our players made many more elementary mistakes throughout the game than the referee.

But of one thing I have not the slightest doubt. Say we had scored an improbable equaliser during our even shorter spell of good play at Chelsea and, instead of stupidly conceding a penalty, kept it at 1-1 until the end. And then Lampard or Cole or someone had headed into our net in identical circumstances to our 93rd minute effort today.

Peter Walton – “I see only red card offences committed BY Liam Miller, not against him” – would have awarded the goal. Chelsea would have won. These things do NOT necessarily even themselves out.

In that narrow respect, namely which sorts of club get what kind of decisions, Roy Keane was right to raise questions about the key decisions.

No wonder Martin O’Neill offered the warmest of handshakes to the ref at the end. Despite Villa being better than us for long periods, Collins’s header threatened to leave them staring another defeat in the face after last week’s shocking performance against Portsmouth. Mr Bennett, bless him, got our boyhood supporter out of jail.

It’s dipped to the lower 30s in the Emirates but some of us still find the heat ferocious. Pete Sixsmith, made of sterner stuff, braved a cold night on Wearside to watch the young ‘uns

If it’s Tuesday, there’s got to be football on somewhere. All the better if it’s watching potential stars making a name for themselves at the Stadium of Light where our Under 18s took on Norwich City in Round 3 of the FA Youth Cup.

By going to this game rather than the Ashington v West Auckland Northern League clash, I was able to kill a few birds with the same stone.

First I managed to purchase a new phone to replace the antiquated Motorola that has my class of 16-year-olds giggling and shaking their heads every time I get it out.

Then I was able to buy tickets for the panto at the Empire which, for those away from the North East, stars 83-year-old Mickey Rooney as Baron Hardup and 50-odd-year-old Les Dennis as Buttons.

By calling in I was able to avoid the ridiculous admin charge of £3 a ticket and it also enabled me to reach the SoL shop at 5.30pm and admire a lengthy queue of young and old waiting to have their pictures taken with a smiling and laid back Dwight Yorke.

But the game was the main reason for being away from my fireside and my bottle of Laphroagh.

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What, asks the Chelsea fans’ blog Chelsea Pies, is Claudio Pizarro for?

Why didn’t they ask Liam Miller the same question? If Pizarro has a point, it is presumably the one on his knee that he poked sneakily into Miller after the latter had the gross impertinence to tackle John Terry.

And if he can get clean away with that, as seems to be the case, the Peruvian player is clearly a great asset to the London club or, as I prefer to call it, brand.

With this seal of approval from Salut! Sunderland to counter those backbiting, ungrateful cynics who support his own team, our Claudio must be left feeling something along the lines of “some you win, some you lose”.

He wins our unstinting admiration for the supreme professionalism he displayed in hoodwinking the match referee Peter Walton when he committed a red card offence that somehow escaped the collective attention of Londoncentric football writers and, if Joan Dawson is right, Match of the Day.

But he remains in a spot of bother not just with Chelsea Pies, but the Peruvian football authorities, which have just banned him for his (alleged) eager participation in another knees up – what our own dear Sun coyly calls a sex romp in the team hotel before helping his country go down, as it were, 5-1 to Ecuador.

Poor Claudio. Poor Peru, to be deprived of such a class act. But how heartening to know that in this cruel, unforgiving world, he has small mercies to be thankful for. And let’s hear it for the good old FA, so often accused of being run by woodentops, for taking such a benevolent view of the sly, yobbish assault on Miller, without which nothing else would have happened and no one would have been sent off.

Who cares about the worthy procedures that exist for punishing such miscreants when their nastiness is missed by the match officials but revealed by the cameras? “Big” clubs and their players must be protected from newly promoted upstarts. And shame on you Sky for trying to spoil everything!