Quick post-match thoughts …

Hands up those brave, sportsmanlike West Ham players who spent much of the first half screaming at the referee to issue cards against Sunderland players.

And step forward the man who went down under Kenwyne Jones’s foolish push, clutching his face as if stitches and possibly one of those full facial transplants would be the only feasible remedy? BBC 5 Live said Jones had to go – since you just don’t raise your hands to an opponent, even in retaliation for a bad foul – but that there had been no contact with Herita Ilunga’s face.

This this suggests an unrelated injury, from which I can only hope Mr Ilunga has fully recovered. Let us hope all is well with him.

But just two thoughts: the most rational post-match fan’s report I have so far seen came from a Sunderland supporter who said Andre Marriner’s decision to award a second booking to the West Ham player Robert Kovac was a joke. And shouldn’t screaming at ref in order to get someone shown a red card – whoever does it – be a cautionable offence?

* E-mail from another SAFC fan: the play acting from West Ham, throughout the game, was shocking, a view not
at all shared by Hammers fans (one of whom e-mailed me “Yes but if you
disregard what you call cheating and we don’t, we deserved to win”).

That said Cana should have gone and probably would have had the ref not been
able to watch the video of the Jones dismissal at half time.

Colin Randall

Colin Randallremembers highs and lows from 40+ years of games between Sunderland and West Ham …

On the face of it, this does not look the worst line-up the English top flight has seen:

Montgomery; Irwin, Hurley, Palmer, Harvey; Suggett, Porterfield, Herd; Harris, Brand, Hughes

Nor, necessarily, does this have the appearance of a world-beating XI:

Ferguson; Bonds, Stephenson, Moore, Charles; Redknapp, Boyce, Peter; Brooking, Hurst, Sissons

King Charlie & co clearly had an offday.
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Sam Haseltine* is one of the brains behind Football United, new host for Salut! Sunderland and other sites. He has been solid as a rock in the process of transferring our archive across from its old home at Typepad to WordPress (and cannot be blamed if some text arrived in garbled form and a few pictures don’t look quite right!). He’s also a passionate Hammers fan, runs the fans’ site West Ham Process and is deaf to my request that his club delays its revival until after we play them on Saturday …

Not a great start to the season. Are you beginning to get worried?

You’re right, not the best of starts. I take confidence in knowing we have a whole three more points than Spurs did at this same point last year! I’m not getting worried just yet, feeling a little down as it wasn’t quite what we expected going into the season. After our run of form at the tail end of last year, we were confident that it would continue into this year, hopefully making us serious Europa League place contenders. I would still put my neck on the line and say we will be there or there abouts this year.

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No apologies for banging on about the Carling Cup defeat. It was a big night for us and we blew it, our own self-destruct tendencies combining in critical fashion with the accomplished versatility of a keeper from overseas. Pete Sixsmith feels he has been there before and is so cross he even has second thoughts about liking Villa and their fans …

Sixteen years ago, almost to the day, Aston Villa won a League Cup tie at Roker Park, thanks to a fantastic goalkeeping performance by Mark Bosnich.

A Sunderland side containing such luminaries as Martin Gray, Alec Chamberlain and David Rush battered the allegedly superior visitors, before falling to a couple of late and thoroughly undeserved goals. I remember talking to Gordon Armstrong the next day at Sedgefield Races and he was still shaking his head in disbelief at what had happened.
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Plenty to say about a needless exit from a competition in which we had the chance to make a serious attempt at winning a trophy. First, Mick Goulding, a regular supplier of astute analysis of SAFC matters at the Blackcats list, explains why he is so angry …

I’m still seething over this. We were the better team, had most of the game, even towards the end of normal time when Villa put us under pressure a bit we never looked in danger.

But we couldn’t score and it had 0-0 written all over it. Then we get a massive break.
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It’s a long way from the top half of the Premier League to a similar place in the UniBond Northern Premier League (oops, that is no longer the case; I should have said the Zamaretto Premier League). That, the Zamaretto, is where Hednesford play their football.
But if that seems lowly league stuff, look at how many people visit the unofficial Hednesford fan site The Price is Right.. For days, as Salut! Sunderland rose through the ranks of football sites listed by Soccerlinks, we were neck and neck with them. Not exactly soaraway stuff: bubbling under the top 50 more like, but each site receiving hundreds of visits daily (a gap has now opened up; we were 52nd when I last looked, they had slipped to 61st).

It’s great for football, as it happens, that such a club can generate so much interest – and even better to see the site ranked ahead of, say, Geordies.net

When I asked whether anyone supporting “The Pitmen” might like to write for Salut! Sunderland, preferably finding some link between our clubs, it was just a throwaway line and I was not sure whether I’d see a single response (unless they’d spotted Pete Sixsmith on one of his non-league forays).

But this is what came back, roughly in order …

* terrymc:

Hello salut,
Just thought you might be interested to know that we have a former Sunderland player in our current ranks.
Sam Aiston was at Sunderland from 1995 to 2000 according to Wikipedia.

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Seemed only fair. Jonathan Fear, from Vital Villa, previewed the Carling Cup match for us so I agreed to return the favour. Salut! Sunderland often asks rival fans the “lazy interviewer’s question” – inviting them to ask something we forgot but they wanted to answer. Jonathan made the ultimate refinement of this device by leaving it to me to ask all the questions as well as answer them …

Good start to the season for Sunderland, with important wins already (question posed before St Andrew’s!) Is this going to be a big season for you?

Certainly better. How big remains to be seen. Ellis Short, our new owner made a top 10 finish his target and I would have settled cheerfully for that until we nearly beat man United and then beat Liverpool. So let’s be bold as say seventh, maybe even sixth.

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Despite our Brummie blues, is this our Carling Cup year? After an easy passage in the two previous rounds, Sunderland face a potentially far stiffer challenge tomorrow night from Aston Villa. But it’s at the Stadium of Light, we’re in form too – or were – and it still offers a great opportunity to move towards a welcome trophy. Jonathan Fear*, who runs the Vital Football network as well as the Aston Villa part of it, has other ideas …

Good start for Villa, with important wins already. Is this going to be a big season for you?

I’m a Villa fan, I don’t make massive predictions, had too many false dawns to start shouting from the roof tops. However, our defence does now appear to be rock solid (I really should not have said that should I?) and we are picking up some great wins without particularly being on top form (Chelsea game aside, which we won with style and deservedly). We have a few players yet to start as they have no form at all – Ashley Young is only doing things in dribs and drabs, John Carew hasn’t turned up to many games etc. That some might say is a negative but to pick up the points whilst not hitting form is nothing but a positive to me as long as at some stage they do turn it on.

So yes, maybe it will be a top season for us, I’ll just not hold my breath, I’m too long in the tooth to get over excited, I’ll just go with the flow!

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After a geographical discussion about the location of certain places within the West Midlands conurbation, Pete Sixsmith actually visited the area on Saturday and came back deeply unimpressed
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What is wrong with this team of ours? We can go to Manchester United and outclass and outplay them. We can take on Liverpool and run out deserved winners in a beach ball dominated game. But when we go to Birmingham City or Burnley or Stoke we surrender meekly to teams who should not be capable of beating us, but do.
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Pete Sixsmith was called upon again by The Observer to sum up a Sunderland game. What a pity they didn’t ask last week …

THE FANS’ PLAYER RATINGS AND VERDICT

Pete Sixsmith, SalutSunderland.com All the beachballs on Scarborough beach would have been needed for us to get anything here. Our inability to beat some of the grittier teams is worrying. City dug in, denied us space and deserved their win. Our midfield never had control and Cattermole was badly missed. Bent should have equalised when we had them on the back foot near the end, but it would have been a point stolen rather than gained. Steve Bruce needs to look at how we approach games like this.

The fan’s player ratings Gordon 8; Bardsley 7, Turner 6, Ferdinand 6, Richardson 6; Malbranque 6 (Campbell 68 6), Cana 6 (Zenden 68 6), Henderson 6 (McCartney 68 7), Reid 7; Jones 6, Bent 6

Paul Rivers, Observer reader It was a deserved win. Sunderland started well, but after the first 10 minutes we pretty much bossed it. Ferguson was the key – he played as sweeper in front of the back four and cleaned everything up. It also made a huge difference playing with two up front; Benitez makes such a nuisance of himself and he linked up very well with Jerome. Steve Bruce got a good reception from the Birmingham fans, while our new owner Carson Yeung must think it’s like this every week!

The fan’s player ratings Hart 5; Carr 7, Ridgewell 8, Johnson 8, Dann 7; McFadden 8 (O’Connor 76 n/a), Ferguson 8, Bowyer 7, Larsson 8 (Carsley 84 n/a); Jerome 7 (McSheffrey 76 n/a), Benítez 9