So we’re all fretting away like mad. We need our minds taking off the trauma of 4pm-6pm Sunday.

Then let Salut! Sunderland offer a little relief by announcing that it has found three prizes for winners of the great Who Are They? awards.

No, we cannot offer a Championship season ticket for St James’ Park as they haven’t been printed yet and we wouldn’t want to tempt fate anyway. No flyaway holidays; not even a measly million from Chris Tarrant or your MP’s duck pond account.

But we have things football fans would actually want to possess:

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See also: How many SAFC games have mattered so much? Follow this link

Salut! Sunderland feels a duty to keep up a decent sort of service on this of all weekends. Here, Pete Sixsmith looks back on that other time – a mere 46 years ago – when we needed to beat Chelsea at home on another final game of the season …

So it’s come down to the game that we feared when the fixtures came out in July.

“Chelsea at home, last game of the season, hope we don’t need anything from that,” went the crack.

“Nah, we’ll be pushing for the top half by then. Keano’s made some nifty signings in Chimbonda and Diouf and I’m sure that this is the season when Stokes really breaks through. In fact, Chelsea will be more worried than us. Reckon it could stop them winning the league. Scolari won’t like 48,000 Mackems roaring their heads off.”

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Two last looks at the vital game on Sunday start here. We can lose and stay up, of course. But, Colin Randall insists, it is not good enough to settle for second best against Chelsea and pray for comforting news from other grounds …

We all have memories. For Sunderland fans, there have been exhilarating moments to make all that passion and loyalty seem worthwhile.

There have been a good deal more gut-wrenching ones that will stick with you until long after the cows have come home.

Vital games are sometimes dotted around a season. This time, we’re concerned only with last games of seasons. And Sunderland v Chelsea matters a massive amount, as did the same encounter back in 1963 about which Pete Sixsmith is preparing a Soapbox piece as I write.

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Blue murder for us on Sunday, forced to pray for good news from Hull or Villa? Or an extraordinary win that makes it unnecessary for us to want for anything except defeat for the Mags? If only Jerry Evans, in the second part of the final Who are They? of the 2008/9 season, could be proved right; Blues fan though he’s been since childhood, he not only thinks we’ll somehow manage it, but hopes so too. He is also a true gent who wants “hate” taken out of footballing rivalries – and rather disapproves of our desire to see the Mags go down – and whose thoughts have been joy to deal with. See the first part of his contribution here and then enjoy his responses to our questions …

So how has the season been for you?

The overall results have been excellent. Third behind an outstanding Man Utd and a resurgent Liverpool is no disgrace. Perhaps the long term injury to the magnificent Essien made the difference. And to hold the stunning Barcelona to one goal in three hours was a great achievement. If Chelsea had set out to throw everything at the Catalans, I believe they might have leaked several goals. Iniesta, Xavi, Messi and co are at the pinnacle of this wonderful game.

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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.

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The romantic in me says Sunderland will finally produce a performance worthy of our magnificent fans and beat Chelsea. The realist in me, er, can just shut up!
For our last Who Are They? feature of the season, we – by which I mean the Colin part of Salut! Sunderland – could not only have turned to a past contributor, David “Sid” Millward, but joined him on a junket via Grand Central and one or other of the SoL corporate bunkers.
I have chosen to stay in France – or rather the sight of the bank balance, as much as Sid being a Chelski fan, dictated that I should – and watch the game on some dodgy web link.
So Sid wasn’t asked to pen some more thoughts. Step forward instead Jerry Evans, even older than the old codgers at Salut! Sunderland but seen in action above with his grandson Nicholas. Jerry’s musings – return here tomorrow and you’ll see why he thinks people like the admirable Jeremy Robson are wrong to hate the Mags – make him a late entrant for the judging currently in progress for our first annual award. And guess who, according to the romantic in him, will win (Sunday’s game, not the award) …

So many years have seen me before the mast at Stamford Bridge that my name has changed from time to time – maybe to protect me because of my football allegiance.

Jeremy Evans was born in wartime – the end of 1939 – but I was known to the family as Jem by the time Great Uncle Bill sat me on his knee at Kingston in 1948 and declared that as I had a burgeoning interest in the game I must go and watch Chelsea play, as he himself had been doing since the year dot.

I dutifully obeyed, of course, and on April 16 1949 stood on the huge west banking at The Bridge for the first time, watching the powerful Derby County easily dispatch the Blues 3-0. I must have thought: “This is how it is. Visitors are strong, and they beat us because we are not very good.”

And for many years that simplistic verdict was not far off the mark. Incidentally, Sunderland, who finished eighth in 48/49, had a 3-0/1-0 double over Chelsea that season.

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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 …

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We can all envisage the nightmare scenario at 10 to six on Sunday: the scores stand at Aston Villa 1 Newcastle 1 … Hull 0 Man United 1 … Sunderland 0 Chelsea 5.
Suddenly, three last-second penalties are awarded: to Hull, the Mags and us. You can work out the rest: Cisse sends the goalie the wrong way but hits the post, Hull survive on equal goal difference, but more scored, and the Mags climb above us.
Pete Sixsmith, disconsolate and angry after last night’s shambles at Fratton Park, actually thinks it will be even more clear cut. His seven-word verdict last night did not have the defensive horror show “threatens” relegation but “means relegation”; only my editing made it less pessimistic;. Similarly, there was no question mark in his suggested headline for this piece. What follows is not for the faint hearted …

When I started doing these pieces 18 months ago, Colin said he wanted thoughtful and reflective articles, done after the din of battle had died away and there was time to take a long view. You could work out your emotions, positive and negative, and give a balanced and calm verdict on what you had seen, thereby enabling readers all over the world to get the considered view from the world’s greatest football club.

Well ******** to that.

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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.”

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No one in the above image from the cover of Peter Allen‘s* book plays for Portsmouth. Peter himself does not wander around Paris chanting Play up Pompey. But’s he a committed fan all the same. He tells Salut! Sunderland about his “cult” football book, explains why he rates Roy Keane but not – as a manager – Tony Adams and reveals the hard-of-thinking Pompey players’ approach to quiz nights …

When I last wrote about Pompey on Salut! Sunderland I doffed a blue and white bobble hat to all the great writers and military heroes with connections to the club. The enticing prospect of getting a literary or battlefield giant to pen a follow-up piece for football’s best written football blog was not lost on the editor, Colin Randall, but sadly Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Bernard Montgomery were all unavailable for selection this season. Accordingly, I’m back answering the questions.

Just before doing so