A great match, after which Birmingham City will feel aggrieved to have lost by two goals, and a great result for us. That completes our run of four home games and we emerge from it unbeaten with eight points, a very decent haul. And this Craig Gordon clip is now in serious need of updating …

Even with halftime approaching, we knew that since this was Sunderland, we could take nothing for granted.
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Such nights don’t come along too often. We’d won promotion and clinched the title, the team were out celebrating with their wives (two of whom got on spectacularly badly as the night wore on). Pete Sixsmith looks back, taking his hat off to Roy Hodgson along the way

As we move into the closing phase of the season, we once again welcome Birmingham City to Sunderland. In recent years they have been regular visitors at this stage and there have been some memorable clashes between the alleged “second” clubs of their respective cities/regions.

In Reidy’s first promotion season, they were absolutely butchered at a noisy Roker Park. We were on the up and they were on the way down. They were in such a poor run of form that even Paul Stewart scored against them and we were spared the sight of the rotund Barry Fry doing his EasyJet impersonation in front of the main stand.

A couple of years (and a relegation for us and a promotion for Blues) later, we grabbed a point against them at the Stadium of Light in a tense and fraught game as we tracked Forest and the Smoggies. That game sticks in my memory because of a stupendous performance from Dele Adebola, who looked the perfect centre forward that night, and far better than a rather pedestrian Danny Dichio.

We missed out that year, but the year after, Reidy produced a wonderful side that romped away with the Nationwide Championship. Blues were our final visitors as we kissed goodbye to the Football League for ever, confident in the knowledge that we were a club destined to challenge the European aristocracy sooner rather than later; that, at least, was how we imagined it.

Blues were an improving side and took the lead in the first half. A full Stadium roared the Lads home as SuperKev sand Niall Quinn slotted home two goals, both of which looked offside, and we won 2-1.

Colin had driven up form London for the game and we had scrounged a lift through.

On the way home, we stopped off at the Dun Cow in Durham and ended up staying as our lift went home. Several pints of Castle Eden later, we were about to set off for the bus, when a couple of lads came in and said that the team were in O’Neills, the Irish bar in Claypath.

Scoop Randall sniffed a story out and we set off for aforementioned bar. On our arrival we came across the entire first team squad in the middle of a real hooley. Alex Rae was in charge of orders, running around with trays full of drinks while quaffing orange juice.

Andy Melville was looking morose as he had been told that he was being released, Mickey Gray and Martin Smith were buzzing and Chris Makin and Nicky Summerbee were propping up the bar supping Guinness and Blackcurrant – ugh!!

We ended up slaughtered and The Daily Telegraph ended up funding a taxi home – I think (it may have been my hope, Pete, but sadly I couldn’t come up with an excuse – ed). I took the next morning off work with a colossal hangover while Colin staggered through the morning before heading home.

Next day we heard that there had been a sharp exchange of views between the wives of two of the players in O’Neills (Martin Smith’s and Paul Butler’s: one local headline had it as “Wives Let Premier Passions Boil Over”). We missed it. It took place in the front bar while we were schmoozing with Makin and Buzzer in the back. Colin missed a scoop and I missed a few thousand brain cells.

In October when we played at St Andrews, I expected at least a point. We had beaten the plastic Scousers with the aid of a beach ball, while Blues were struggling to score goals and win games. They beat us 2-1 and have never looked back.

That they have had a very good season is down to good fortune with injuries, a settled side and an excellent manager in Alex McLeish. He took them down, got them up and has now made sure that they have comfortably retained their place for next season. He has signed some good players in Dann and Johnson, reformed a couple of nasties in Bowyer and Ferguson and made a great call in taking Joe Hart on loan.

His job was under pressure last season as they limped towards promotion, but quality counts. He has a good pedigree – Motherwell and Aberdeen are good clubs, Rangers are as big as most and he has worked with a national side even if it was only Scotland. And Birmingham have stuck with him. Good sides are built, not created.

Big Hec might have been in the running for Manager Of The Year. But for me, there is only one candidate: Roy Hodgson.

Fulham 4 Juventus 1 is the score line of the century. I saw Fulham at Feethams, not that many years ago, in a Fourth level game. Darlington beat them.

Thanks to Harrods money, and the work of Mickey Adams, Messiah Keegan and Super Brace, they climbed up the leagues into the top division. Under Laurie Sanchez they were on their way back to whence they came. Sanchez went, Hodgson (a man even older than me and Colin) came in and saved them from visits to Scunthorpe, Doncaster and Newcastle.

We beat them at Craven Cottage 3-1 and they were useless. Hodgson appeared on the radio afterwards and complimented Sunderland and Kenwyne Jones in particular. He accepted that it would be hard work to stop up. I wrote them off as did most people. They won five out of their last six games to stop up.

Since then, they have gone from strength to strength, are now an established Premier League club and are successful in Europe. Would that we were there. We need the patience with our management team that Fulham fans have shown to theirs.

Salut! Sunderland offers sincere congratulations to Liverpool and Fulham for two superb Europa League results overturning away deficits to beat Lille and Juventus respectively.
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We’re on a mini-run, they’ve never had it so good in living memory. Saturday sees Sunderland v Birmingham City, and only a home win would have us seriously believing in revivalist terms. Leigh Bosworth*, pictured with a spoof front page presented to him on his recent 50th birthday, is co-founder of the newly relaunched Yorkshire Bluenoses (a branch of the BCFC supporters’ club until now divided into parts of the county) and rises to the Salut! Sunderland challenge with some great thoughts on Monty, SuperKev, money, cheating, Wayne Bridge v John Terry and his “best season” as a Bluenose …

Salut! Sunderland: So, completely useless against us in the Carling Cup and you haven’t looked back much since. Even Villa fans must be taking you seriously. Explain your great season so far …

The Carling Cup was not going to be a serious competition for us this season and even the £10 a head entry that night was too much for the lack of spectacle dished up by both teams. At least it was easy to get a beer or two beforehand and to get away from the ground afterwards.

As for our journey this season, we’ve had many a regaled cliché (no, not Gael Cliché) with the ‘professional’ pundits: we have had the expected struggle because we were simply not good enough without any proven players, then punched above our weight, dug in and ground out results, ridden our luck, been over the moon, this season’s surprise package and so on…

In brief though, it has been achieved without so-called megastars – who can be quite divisive – but rather with a bunch of honest players, a collective desire that is greater when they are thrown together, giving a fairly formidable team spirit, plus improving football as they have got used to each other, though without the goals the build up play has deserved at times. All in all, a cohesive group of technically competent footballers playing as a TEAM. Johnson & Dann, as the new central defensive partnership have been a wonder to behold, as they were untried at Premier league level, although Big Eck (Alex McLeish) as a former central defender himself, is a good judge of a stopper – possibly better than the fella we used to have at the managerial helm.

Interestingly, a month after we capitulated at the Stadium of Light in the Carling Cup, we beat you comfortably at our place and that was the first in our 15 game unbeaten run that took us into the top half of the table. This coincided with the new owners taking full control of the club and settling things down, which has helped enormously.

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This first appeared a couple of days ago, but deserves a bump back to the top because of the quality of the ensuing debate.

Phil Brown is a Mackem, he’s passionate and he led Hull City to heights few of their fans can realistically have expected to see. He has done questionable things – the dressing down for his team on the field at Eastlands was amateurish, Sloop John B on the pitch embarrassing, not talking to local radio absurd – but overall he can hold his head high. Jeremy Robson, a Sunderland fan exiled in Canada, puts in a few words for the man who must now choose between becoming events and entertainments manager of the local WI or using his gardening leave to profitable horticultural effect …

There’s a certain irony, isn’t there, with clubs (and the associated manager) overachieving. Chairmen are rarely happy with a single miracle and want a second (or in Hull’s case a third following promotion and then avoiding the drop). Football managers really ought to be careful what they wish for.

Phil Brown got Hull City somewhere they’ve spent their entire existence dreaming about (see nicksarebi’s Flickr photo of that grand day at Wembley). Now he’s got the sack.

No Jock Stein, or Brian Clough is Phil, but he’s effectively become a victim of his own success.

Personally I think he got dead lucky when they went up. (Our own) Fraizer Campbell looked the business down there on loan.

Allied to Michael Turner and an ageing Barmby and Windass who gave everything for him he managed to get them up against all odds. There’s an argument of course which says that regardless of who the manager may be, come the end of the season there will be three teams go down and three go up.

That’s just the way it is, and the line between success and failure is very thin indeed. The play offs to all intents and purposes mean that line is removed altogether. The ultimate spin of the wheel that turns losers into winners.

Maybe the Hull board should have been grateful and been content with a swashbuckling adventure of a season in the top flight and accepted that they will eventually drop to their normal level sooner rather than later, but no the miracle maker is deposed to tending his allotment while the likes of Brian Horton (previously not considered good enough to manage Hull any longer, together with Steve Parkin; (who was sacked at Rochdale not so long ago) are handed the reins.

I quite like Phil Brown. He’s one of us. If they were going to sack him it should probably have been earlier in the season or in the summer for my money. I’m not saying that he has done a particularly good job at Hull City during his time in the Premier League, but what exactly did the board expect other than a battle against the drop?

The only players that were prepared to sign for him were those drinking in the PL’s last chance saloon, (McShane, Kilbane, Boateng and the permanently injured Bullard) who weren’t wanted by other top flight clubs or who were comparatively larger fish in other very small ponds such as Cousin and Vennegoor of Hesselink.

The teams that Brown put out were as good as could reasonably be expected.

Bigger names were unlikely to want to sign for a club of Hull’s stature when the statistics against them remaining in the top flight for more than two seasons makes grim reading, not just for Hull City, but any newly promoted club. It’s even worse for the club that gets up via the play offs.

There’s a long list of managers who were considered to be the best thing since sliced bread at the post promotion party. Billy Davies, Owen Coyle, Tony Mowbray, Nigel Worthington, Alan Pardew, Danny Wilson, George Burley, to name a few that ultimately became the victims of their own success in getting unfancied, less wealthy teams promoted against the odds.

Their various moments of glory were fleeting and most of them were relieved of duty when results started to falter. Phil Brown is just the latest name on that list. All of these managers were rather like Icarus. They flew too high and too fast. Owen Coyle’s real mettle will be tested during the run in to the end of the season. In three seasons he will be the manager at Old Trafford if you believe some observers. He’s equally likely to be driving a milk float; truth be told.

There are those who point to Phil’s half time rant at Eastlands and attribute this to Hull’s fall down the table. Results after the Man City game and even in the second half were no worse and no better than those which went before. The depth of Hull City’s problems are yet to be revealed and they have not departed with Phil Brown.

Hull City are in what appears to be a particularly unenviable financial position if various media reports are to be believed.

Maybe sacking him and saving his salary is the long and the short of it. It really doesn’t seem like footballing sense to me.

If I were a Hull fan, I’d be seriously concerned at having Messrs Horton and Parkin in charge as no long term successor appears to have been scouted ahead of time. A kneejerk reaction is one thing, To have little idea why your knee is jerking is a completely different matter.

I will personally miss Phil Brown’s sun tan, microphone and the fact that he always seems to say just what he thinks. That’s what you get with a Mackem.

Are the suits intent on chipping away at the soul of football until nothing’s left, as I suggested elsewhere in response to SAFC’s new Big Idea, hawking the name of the Stadium of Light? Or does it not matter a jot what the place is called as long as we are given something to appreciate once inside? Colin Randall thought he was sure of the answer …

So there I was, driving through France and feeling happy with life. I’ve just about persuaded myself (perhaps prematurely) that we’re not going down. I love France and shouted as much when I saw the first road sign – Aix-en-Provence/Toulon/Nice – that told me I was on the last leg (Toulon being little more than a Jonny Wilkinson drop kick from where I live).

Then came a succession of noises from the mobile, enough to give me the idea there might be a hot new debate on the Blackcats e-mail loop.
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… only in a spot of fun offered by the Sunderland Echo, which produced this mock-up image to show how the Mags’ hero might look if he were prepared to wear the SAFC shirt.

He was asked to do it for charity – Sport Relief – and refused point blank. It is not that he’s an especially tight sod who’d never dream of digging into his pockets for a good cause; in fact, he even offered to shower Adrian Chiles, presenter of BBC’s One Show, with cash.
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At long last, Sunderland are showing signs of being the useful team we thought Steve Bruce had assembled when we were beating Arsenal and Liverpool and getting so close to victory at Old Trafford. Pete Sixsmith awards warm praise where it’s due, but wishes we could have kept those signs evident for 94 minutes, not just 45 …

If you had been a Martian visiting our planet and been told there was a football match taking place between the richest club on Earth and a team struggling at the wrong end of the table, and the person telling you had forgotten to mention which team was which, you would have assumed yesterday that the one in Red and White stripes represented Croesus and the Blues were the strugglers.
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Over the past few days, there have been some good exchanges between Sunderland and Man City supporters, especially – in the case of City – from the Bluemoon fans’ site.

Pete Sixsmith’s reminiscences on the day he took his Dad to see SAFC v City at Roker Park (a treat for a football fan, but Dad didn’t care for football) were rightly admired. City fans may challenge Pete’s observations on the match itself.

Now, Blues fans are, for obvious reasons, voicing their great hopes for Adam Johnson*, who returned to his native Sunderland to score the last-gasp equaliser. It was, in all honesty, deserved but broke our hearts all the same.
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Come back for Pete Sixsmith’s more considered view from the East Stand. This is how it seemed based on a mixture of radio commentary and Sky …

Craig Gordon, John Mensah and, until forced off by injury at half time, Kenwyne Jones did not deserve to be in a non-winning team.
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