Football just isn’t what it was, lad.

Back in days gone by, you could stand with a supporter of the other team, bonded by mutual love of the people’s game, in the sure knowledge you were safe from harm.

If you were old enough to get in, you’d be in their pubs rubbing shoulders, taking turns to buy rounds and swapping jolly stories and jokes.

And if you think you just saw a pig in mid-flight outside the bedroom window, you’d be about right.

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Mrs Logic

Before we offer a quick glance back at the week as seen by Salut! Sunderland, stand by for some news of our own: the site is about to undergo a long-overdue redesign. The idea is to make it look less like a blog, more a magazine. If there are things you’d hate to see go, features you could happily do without, links you find useful/a waste of space … etc etc … here is the chance to sound off. Older readers may remember Shots at Sleeman in the Sunday Sun. This can be Shots at Sixer & Salut …

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Sunderland Reserves 2 Everton Reserves 0. Take away the R word and that’s the sort of scoreline we can really enjoy.

But it was the Reserves, of course; all the same, they deserve a hearty pat on the back for a good home win that puts them top of the league.

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Is there a cushier tie in the Everton fixture list than Sunderland at home? Will Jermaine Beckford score two against anyone else at this level? How worried should we be after a gutless surrender bringing the losing streak to four, with three tough games to come? Pete Sixsmith joins up the dots to offer some thoughts …

My first visit to Goodison Park was in January 1966 for a Fourth Round FA Cup tie (which kicked off at 3pm along with the other 15 games that day).

I travelled on a coach from Shildon with, if memory serves me correctly, Phil Younghusband and Robert Newton. It was an uncomfortable day in the footballing cathedral that housed England’s then finest team as we lost 3-0 mostly due to turning in a performance that I would have described as supine had I known that word then.

Forty five years on, some things have changed and some haven’t. Phil and Robert have long departed the North East, Everton are no longer among England’s elite and to describe Goodison as a cathedral would be akin to saying that North Africa is a haven of peace and political stability.

I am, however, still travelling by coach and, more relevantly, witnessing performances that make me continue to use the word supine and question why on earth I part with hard earned money to watch utter dross like this.

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Courtesy: A Love Supreme

Dear Colin

That was up there with our most disappointing days this season.

We’ve prided ourselves on our resilience, especially away from home, and that’s the disappointing thing for me.

Today we were too easily beaten and we have to admit that. We gave poor goals away and when you do that in this division, you get punished.

Goodison has never been a good hunting ground for us, but wherever we go in the Premier League, if we play with that apathy we’ll come unstuck.

We had the first chance through Kieran before they scored, and then Sessegnon hit the bar which might have made a difference.

But I can’t make excuses because we were second best today.

The two goals we conceded today were awful and that’s summed us up of late. You can’t give away goals like that.

The one reason we’re in the situation we’re in is the defensive situation across the whole team.

At the moment it’s not quite right so we have concentrate on that.

All the best,

Steve Bruce

Whether Sunderland deserve a quick post-match report is frankly in doubt.

But one exchange from BBC Radio Newcastle’s live coverage seemed to sum it up rather well. It went a little like this:

Gary Bennett: “How could Ferdinand be muscled off the ball like that by Arteta?’

Nicky Barnes: “I don’t know what he thought he was doing there.”

Bennett: “I don’t know what he thinks he’s been doing all afternoon.”

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Starting at Goodison, and a fourth successive defeat after defending he said “would shame the Northern League”, Pete Sixsmith presents his incisive seven-word verdicts on just about every Sunderland game. When, rarely, Pete is absent, a supersub does it for him. The full archive – see link below – encapsulates the matchday experiences, from darkest gloom to sublime elation, of a fan who is usually there …

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

Feb 5 2011 Stoke City (1) 3 SAFC (1) 2 Take your pick: Horrible result against a truly horrible team or A refereeing performance that defies reasonable analysis

Feb 1 2011 SAFC (2) 2 Chelsea (2) 4 Cracking game deservedly won by arrogant Blues

Jan 22 2011 Blackpool (0) 1 SAFC (2) 2 Excellent first half but tight at end

Jan 16 2011 SAFC (0) 1 Newcastle United (0) 1 Bacon saved by Gyan but scarcely deserved

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 you’ve worked with singers from Mary Black to Charlotte Church, and been in charge of the music at George Best’s funeral, the phrase “I’m a musician” seems a touch inadequate. Frank Gallagher*, a man who therefore seems to add modesty to his boundless charisma, energy and talent, is our Evertonian ‘Who are You?’ previewer. Frank has a great turn of phrase which, judging by her description of Billy Hughes on FA Cup Final night, he may have inherited from his mother …

Salut! Sunderland: Deep in debt, back in the shadows of your neighbours and struggling to hang on to key players: is this Everton for the foreseeable future or will a sheikh or Russian billionaire ride to the rescue?

It’s clear the only way to compete significantly in the Premiership is with a mega-wallet so I fear a billionaire might be our only hope…Russian, American, Libyan…we’ll not be fussy just as long as he’s loaded. The irony is that we were the original tycoon team, when John Moores of the Littlewoods Pools dynasty looked after us in the 60s and 70s.

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Since M Salut is on the road in France, there isn’t time for much posting of new material before this week’s Who are You? feature which will run tomorrow as we approach the resumption, for Sunderland, of the football season.

But here is a sneak preview of that feature.

Our Evertonian is a pal, Frank Gallagher, known through his forays as a musician into the folkie territory of M Salut’s acquaintance.
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In which Luke Harvey sticks up for his fellow youngster Jordan Henderson, whose performance against Everton has been sharply criticised by a number of longer-in-the-tooth supporters. But then Luke still cannot quite get Chelsea out of his mind …

Monday night’s match against Everton showed that you don’t have to be the best teams in the league to produce football of high entertainment value.

Nor do you need the best players in the world, for they are all dodging high tax bands and competing in that duopoly that is La Liga. While Real and Barcelona thump even the better teams in the league by four or five goals, it’s a continuous battle here in England.
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