It had to happen sooner or later. Gordon Brown has become embroiled in the scandal over the exclusion of Sunderland Women’s football club from the proposed Super League of eight teams – despite being current Premier League leaders, FA (Women’s) Cup finalists last season and a team containing nine international players at different levels.

The FA has been maintaining the apparent fiction that no decision has yet been made, even though the club says it has been told – by, presumably, the FA – that Sunderland’s strong case for a place has been brushed aside on commercial and marketing grounds.

Among the many football supporters outraged by this latest piece of discriminatory nonsense from the FA were non-Sunderland fans, including Wull Rowan from our good friends at FootballUnited (futd.com).

Will decided to start a petition with the aim of shaming the FA into making the decision that would surely strike any neutral observer as decent and fair: offer Sunderland WFC a place.
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The tension is beginning to build. Sunderland have a strong strike force and, on paper, a semi-viable defence but no one knows quite how Steve Bruce will fashion a midfield from depleted ranks. Arsenal have problems, too, from injuries of their own to question marks over some of Arsène Wenger’s players (though Sod’s Law decrees that the hapless, fumbling Lukasz Fabianski would have a blinder if he played against us). We turned again to New York City and Fatima al Shamsi*, a rare Man City-loathing Emirati (above, left, with her sister Alyazhah), for a few more nuggets of wisdom from the world of gloryseeking Goonerworship. Fatima is charitable about SAFC, pragmatic about cheating, unladylike about Barcelona’s Ibrahimovic and restrained in her match forecast …

What about Arsenal’s season? Are you still right behind Arsène Wenger or do you feel you need someone else to move you on? I take it you’ve been following your Gunners from afar.

Unfortunately still watching them predominantly on my laptop although I have made a few trips to sports cafés whenever we’ve had an 11am kick off (NYC time). I like to be behind Arsene but our starting 11 against ManU was a horrible choice , although to be fair I’m not too sure what our alternative options could have been given the state of our injuries and such. I’m starting to get frustrated (about time too) but despite that, I still have faith in our crazy French man. What we do need is to get a decent experienced player to help pull the talent we already have all together – and I don’t count Sol Campbell as one, despite his goal against Porto this week. also more importantly we need to look into some decent goalkeepers neither Almunia nor Fabianski play convincingly enough to be part of a top team.

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