Plugs follow, but a quick word on football first: can we play as well at Old Trafford as we did at Stamford Bridge? Boxing Day will present Sunderland with another stiff test of the squad’s growing maturity and flair. No Welbeck, of course, and no Mensah, which is a huge blow, but we are entitled to look to Bent and Gyan, and our Ferdinand, for convincing performances.
And the plugs? Well, with what little time is left – or with an eye to the new year – why not consider choosing from these cut-price presents (that quiz book you see comes at under £7 from this link)? Or have a wander through what follows …

Until we won our honourable little mention in the When Saturday Comes “virtual gongs”, the idea had been to combine hopes for three points against Bolton with another plug for the last-minute Christmas presents you can get from Amazon via the links on this site. We had the three points in the bag before we could get around to posting it.

Britain, as we know, cannot cope with a spot of wintry weather so you’ll have to see what Amazon says about delivery times.

But any Sunderland fan deprived of these goodies for Christmas will be just as grateful for some new year gifts.

Don’t buy anything you or someone close wouldn’t want, but if something takes your fancy, do feel happy about helping Salut! Sunderland meet its running costs.

Just browse the book offers below. Every order placed is appreciated by Salut! Sunderland but there’s no need to worry that the commission will make anyone here rich …

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Next up with a midterm report is Malcolm Dawson, a regular name here and chairman of the Heart of England branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association. Malcolm, pictured at a branch function with Chris Herriott, the founder (right, and the excellent Gary Bennett, presents his Sunderland Christmas shopping list in case Amazon can overcome weather problems and deliver …

So here we are in the run up to Christmas with our club sitting sixth in the Premiership and if the weather around Bloomfield Road had allowed the Seasiders to continue their bright start by beating Tottenham, we could have been fifth.

Of course, had Welbeck’s strike against Bolton hit the inside of the post and gone in, or had Darren Bent found the target with one of three efforts he might have put away on another day, we would have been fifth. But let’s not get greedy. And let’s not get carried away.
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Monsieur Salut didn’t get as worked up as some about the World Cup venue votes. Cries of foul play? Last-minute manipulation? Prize snatched from under the expectant winner’s nose. Er, no, that was London beating Paris to the 2012 Olympics. But other issues have arisen, so stand by for some straight(ish) talking from Birflatt Boy …

A couple of weeks after the ridiculous announcement that the 2022 World Cup would be held in a country that currently has three suitable stadiums, and where the temperatures during the tournament will be so high that you could cook bacon and eggs on the roof of your car, there is now furore surrounding comments from the Fifa president Sepp Blatter.
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If Saturday in Sunderland was cold by normal standards, it was positively balmy by comparison with what was happening almost everywhere else. But 1245 is a rotten kickoff time, as witnessed by empty seats that cannot all be attributed to the weather. All the same, three good points made it all seem like a heatwave. Pete Sixsmith reports on the tough encounter that awaited those of us who made the effort …

Could there have been a worse time for this game? The Saturday before Christmas, a 1245 kick off and visitors who rarely bring more than a couple of coachloads of fans.

Add to that the fact that many people still see Bolton as the personification of grimness in football and I think we did bloody well to attract just under 35,000 Sunderland fans to the Stadium on Saturday.
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Ascension
Akuppa

Not the most popular statement a Sunderland supporter can make here, and directly at odds with the first line of the song, but it is the season of goodwill …

Masquerading as a Clio-driving visitor from France, not so far from the truth, Monsieur Salut went undercover after the victory over Bolton.
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When you worry about getting to the game, whether it will be on, whether you’ll get back, three points – however tough we make them to secure – are heartily welcome. Always a threat going forward and generally safe at the back, we lacked finishing punch against a hard-working team that started the day above us.

This, then, is Sunderland AFC in snapshot, the most recent of Pete Sixsmith’s inimitable seven-word verdicts on each of our games. The full archive – see link below – encapsulates the matchday experiences, from darkest gloom to sublime elation, of a fan who is usually there …

Dec 18 2010 SAFC (1) 1 Bolton Wanderers (0) 0 Marginally the better team. Merry Christmas all

Dec 11 2010 Fulham (0) 0 SAFC (0) 0 Unambitiously scrappy draw, but Mensah was immense

Dec 5 SAFC (1) 1 West Ham United (0) 0 Made hard work of beating relegation certainties

Nov 27 Wolves (0) 3 SAFC (0) 2 Points thrown away by totally inept defending

Nov 22 SAFC (1) 2 Everton (1) 2 Fair result but should have held on

Nov 14 Chelsea (0) 0 SAFC (1) 3 Best performance in years: a stunning show

To see Sixer’s Sevens in full, click here. If an asterisk precedes the comment, the words that follow are the work of someone else because Pete is for once absent from the game or his verdict has been delayed …

When it comes to awards and honours, Salut! Sunderland has been happy to stick to the back seat.

That is usually becasue no one nominates us, or we hear about invitations for entries too late to give it a bash.

But we get kind words here, as well as the brickbats, and this encourages those of us who fill the site’s pages to believe we occasionally get something right.

Now comes modest confirmation from outsiders, in the shape of the excellent people at When Saturday Comes, well-known for its self-description as a “half decent” football magazine.
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Image: Ben Sutherland

Next up among the Bolton fans who answered our “Who are You?” Mayday message: not my old camarade Ian Jones, royal photographer of note (Monsieur Salut, naturellement, has republican tendencies but we always worked together well), but the next best thing, his brother-in-law Peter Stott*. Interesting thoughts, not least on a certain “comedy club” and a surprise relegation candidate ...

Salut! Sunderland: What a great start for Bolton. – you must be getting nosebleeds? Is it purely down to Owen Coyle?

Absolutely. Owen Coyle has only made a couple of additions to the squad that he inherited from Gary Megson but he has totally transformed the style of football we play. The mustn’t lose style has gone and has been replaced by attractive passing and attacking football. There have been several games this season where the team on the field had none of Coyle’s signings but played in the Coyle style. Tat in itself demonstrates that its down to Coyle because we never saw anything attractive when Megson was in charge.

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The Fish of Bolton
Image: Surprise truck

What were saying about Bolton fans being like London buses? Wait half an hour, then three come along together. No sooner had we thought of throwing in the towel on finding a Wanderers supporter than replies started flooding in. Well trickling. The policy is straightforward: if people are good enough to respond, the responses will be used even if we end up with an excess of riches. Natasha Whittam*, a fiery character well known to those who haunt Bolton fan sites, wanted to do this a season or two ago but then disappeared from our radar. Now she’s back just when we most needed her, happy with her rejuvenated team but offering some forthright views on Gary Megson, old grounds v new, Newcastle United and Fifa …

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Lofthouse v Gregg: The Big Book of Football Champions 1958
TuebrookDave

Who can they possibly mean? Are there lots of Egyptians in Bolton?

So Sunderland, our own El Bale and all, take on the high-flying Wanderers on Saturday. But this is an emergency “Who are You?”. It always seems tough, for some reason, to find Bolton fans to do this feature, and the search hasn’t been helped by illness, at their end and ours. We haven’t quite given up, but this may have to do …

Teams of highly trained Salut! Sunderland sleuths scoured Lancashire, indeed the world, for someone answering the description “warm, witty or wise supporter of Bolton Wanderers.

Mindful of our great tradition of getting an opposing supporter to preview each match (except when every Stoke City fan seemed to be saying “rearrange off and f*** into a well-known phrase or saying”), we kept going until the very end. And then the end came. Sadly, our intrepid search party had drawn a blank.
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