For weeks, he’s been silent, But Birflatt Boy has been provoked beyond endurance and is back on the warpath. In his sights: Steve Bruce’s over-dependence on loan signings, and one in particular. It is fair to conclude that BB was not among those casting shedloads of MOTM votes for Elmo earlier in the season (though it’s also fair to add that the Egyptian has champions among SAFC fans while some opposing supporters regard him as a real threat) …

Any hopes of European qualification that we might have had have been sunk.

And one of the many problems we have, to my mind, is that we are top heavy with loanees: Mensah, Muntari, Onouha, Welbeck, and of course our very own version of Forrest Gump, Ahmed Elmohamady, or “Elmo” for short. This one really is the runt of the loanee litter!

Five of them, and they have featured regularly this season. We still haven’t committed on anyone yet, even though a spokesman from Elmos’s club in Egypt was quoted as saying that to all intents and purposes “he is now a Sunderland player”.

But you can’t build a team with players that belong to somebody else. Especially when they are like this fellah!

(more…)

Rarely in recent times has a Sunderland debut been as keenly awaited as that of Asamoah Gyan, who should team up with Darren Bent to cause Wigan all sorts of problems on Saturday. That’s the theory anyway. But if you saw a Daily Star headline suggesting that Steve Bruce “admired” Gyan’s World Cup penalty miss, rest assured that he did nothing of the kind …

Alert readers will have seen that the image (below), sometimes used to illustrate Salut! Sunderland items relating to Darren Bent, is credited to a man who calls himself Addick-tedKevin and can therefore be assumed to support Charlton Athletic.

No surprise, then that Kevin should have paid his artistic tribute to Benty, who scored 31 times in 68 games for the Addicks between 2005 and 2007.

(more…)