We’re going early with this week’s “Who are You?”. It would be easy to say this was because it is such an important match that it was high time to stop carping about what has made it so. The more humdrum reason: I’m away in Italy today and will have my work cut out on Thursday. My thanks to Kieran Heapy, otherwise known as HeapyLatic on Wigan Athletic sites – including his own, Pie Eaters Footie* and the one through which we found him, This Northern Soul - for saving poor old Salut! Sunderland award-winning Bernard Ramsdale from having to do it again for the umpteenth time …

Salut! Sunderland: I hoped the tone of this question would have needed changing after last weekend, but not so. Can there be any Premier team you’d rather have to play than us just now?

It would be Blackpool, even though we have just played them, they are the team that are currently on the slide. They look very much like Burnley did last season, started well but second half of the season they have been found out and teams can stop them playing. Saying that you still have to be on top of the game, there really haven’t been any easy games this season, and any win has to be very well fought for.

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The following headline, a staggeringly self-evident gem of its kind, appeared at the Ladbroke’s site (where you can get only 10/1 on us to go down) …

Home games liable to determine Sunderland’s season

With insight like that, who needs to consult any other pundit?

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Steve Bruce took a lot more consolation from a 2-0 defeat at St Andrew’s than our own Pete Sixsmith, who – when not noting with grudging admiration the class of Seb Larsson – recognised some improvement but felt it stopped a long way short of what was required …

As recent performances go, this one wasn’t bad – although that really is damning it with faint praise. But it was another defeat, another drop in the table and an entry ticket to the scrap that is taking place to avoid visits to Coventry, Barnsley and Middlesbrough next season.

There are some positives that we can take from this. The passing was sharper and crisper than of late. We did create some chances. The team seemed to be together. On another day, we could have won or at least taken a much needed point.

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At some stage this week, we need to stop banging on about how to apportion blame for an atrocious run that has taken Sunderland from the fringes of European competition to the bleak familiarity of a relegation scrap.

We need to get behind the team, whatever some may think about its leadership, and provide encouragement for the home game (nearly said vital but they all are, potentially, now) against Wigan Athletic.

As seems to be our lot, we will face newly emboldened opponents. The 3-1 win at Blackpool has Latics fans simpering at the prospect of survival, not least when they see our state of disarray. It also shows, ominously, that they can score goals.

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Image: Peter Burgess

FA Cup semi-finals weekend: we weren’t involved after our meek early exit. We now know Man City will be back at Wembley for the final, having beaten Man United. Bolton and Stoke battle it out – hardly the phrase now I’ve seen the 5-0 scoreline in City’s favour – today to decide who will be the pundits’ tip for losing finalists. We also have yet another Sunderland Premier defeat to try to forget, as we will in time. So while Pete Sixsmith sharpens his pen (and maybe knife) before delivering his Soapbox view on that one, let’s take another shameless dip into the archives, from the days when Salut! Sunderland had so few readers such postings were probably not seen at all. It did also appear in a matchday SAFC programme but if you missed it in either place, and have a soft spot for other people’s hard luck stories, read on. You’ll learn about a Big Match day out – our last appearance in an FA Cup semi-final, back in 2004 – that sticks nastily in the memory for some Sunderland supporters …

It is bad enough being dumped out of the FA Cup after reaching the semi-finals and a game against Millwall that we all expect to win.

But you know it’s not your day when you are then dumped in the mud near Derby – sorry, County fans, nothing personal about the location – on your way home.

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In the semi-final of the ToteSport Cup on May 4, Sunderland Reserves will play Preston Reserves.

Pete Sixsmith would doubtless have done his utmost to be there, along with a few hundred other hardy souls to whom reserve team football offers a fascinating insight into the way things are going through the club.

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Pity poor Pete Sixsmth. Another early start for a long awayday, another bitter disappointment. Once again, The Observer asked for his verdict. We start with the Birmingham fan …

KYM YPRES-SMITH, SmallHeathAlliance.com

We’ve been worried for weeks, especially after dipping into the bottom three, but this win means we can breathe again – we just need a few more points to be sure. I think 2-0 was a fair reflection of the game. Our first goal was bizarre but just reward for Larsson – he was our man of the match today, Bowyer also played well. We’ve still got a lot of injuries but team spirit got us through today.

Player ratings
Foster 8; Carr 8, Johnson 9, Ridgewell 8, Parnaby 7; Larsson 9 (Fahey n/a), Ferguson 8, Gardner 8, Bowyer 8; Jerome 7 (Derbyshire 90 n/a), Phillips 6 (Hleb 63 7)

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… in which Steve Bruce bemoans our luck. Part of me takes his point – we dominated for long periods, had half chances and fashioned the best move of the match from which Henderson went close to equqlising – and another part wants to write back and say “sorry Steve, it just won’t wash”. Either way, we’re left hoping for salvation from points still to be won against other teams scrapping for survival …

Dear Colin,

The one thing you can’t account for is individual error and unfortunately that’s what the first goal was.

I haven’t seen the goal back on replay yet but it was an awful one to give away.

Overall the performance was good – possibly the best we’ve played for a while, which is the positive out of it.

Sometimes our performances haven’t been up to where they should be but we played very with a young team.

Unfortunately we couldn’t score, and that’s the defining thing. Goals are what we’re in need of and unfortunately that wasn’t there today.

It was a game of nearlies. The performance pleased me – we played well all over the pitch.

But unfortunately when you’re not winning sometimes things go against you. We didn’t deserve to lose today, but we have.

I hope the players take confidence from the performance. If we perform like that next week I’m quietly confident we’ll get a result.

It was good to watch and it was a huge shame we couldn’t come away with something.

All the best,

Steve Bruce

Staring with yet another defeat, these are the most recent of Pete Sixsmith‘s incisive seven-word verdicts capturing the essence of just about every game. When, rarely, Pete is absent, a supersub does it for him. The full Sixer’s Sevens archive – see link below – encapsulates the matchday experiences, from darkest gloom to sublime elation, of a fan who is usually there …

April 16 2011 Birmingham City (1) 2 SAFC (0) 0 Soft goals mean our position is critical

April 9 2011 SAFC (2) 2 West Bromwich Albion (2) 3 All our weaknesses horribly exposed: totally inept

April 3 2011 Manchester City (2) 5 SAFC (0) 0 No shape, no fight, heading for oblivion

March 20 2011 SAFC (0) 0 Liverpool (1) 2 Liverpool better, but crucial decisions against us

March 5 2011 Arsenal (0) 0 SAFC (0) 0 Take your pick: A solid performance to be proud of or Better than Barca as we thwart Gunners

Feb 26 2011 Everton (2) SAFC (0) Were never in the game; easily beaten

Feb 12 2011 SAFC (1) 1 Tottenham Hotspur (1) 2 Beaten by side one step above us

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 …

This was another result we feared, but it should never have happened.

Better team in the first half, miles better at the start of the second and you can guess the rest: goalkeeping error before halftime puts us one down, then City’s first good move in an hour doubles their lead – Mignolet again arguably at fault – to leave Niall Quinn looking as glum as we feel.

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