Well done Niall Quinn.

Just as comments here recommended, he has seen the Gyan-for-sale reports as one rumour too far, issuing this statement:

“I’m sorry that our fans have to read the endless speculation that appears in the press at this time of year. Normally we don’t comment on any of it as there’s so much – for instance we’ve been linked to over 40 players in the last month or so alone.

However, the suggestion that we have spoken to an agent to sell this player on our behalf is embarrassing to all concerned. I hope our fans would be smart enough to realise that this is probably some other club or outside agents’ way of attempting to destabilise our relationship with one of our players.”

Maybe as his next step, he should order a halt to the practice of safc.com of having it both ways by pubishing the rumour mill he so despises – oops – throughout the close season. I’m told they also tweet away at each rumour involving our club, which seems unbelievably at odds with the official outlook.

And Niall’s declaration closely followed one made to me by at Twitter by Ian Abrahams – Moose at TalkSport – who responded to my question to him on the veracity or otherwise of the report. “Absolute rubbish” was his reply and Niall gets as close as he can to echoing the thought.

Luke Harvey

The end-of-season reviews have been thought-provoking and varied, from M Salut’s own maybe excessive support for Steve Bruce – whose continued defence of the failure to replace Darren Bent defies logic – to the hard-hitting analysis offered by subsequent writers. Two, possibly three, remain to be fitted in before Pete Sixsmith has the final word. Here, Luke Harvey* discusses our respectable average attendances and asks the club to match the commitment he has made for next season …

“Twenty-five thousand empty seats…” came the chanting from burly shaven-headed males as the Newcastle-Sunderland free train trundled towards its destination.



Needless to say my head was dipped low and any thoughts that popped into my head remained there; they were never verbalised as I was very much the minority among the crowd of travelling Newcastle fans.

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The report cards are coming in thick and fast now. If Bill Taylor brought us down to earth with his pastiche of the post-match Steve Bruce e-mails, stand by for a few more home truths as Jeremy Robson casts a highly critical eye over goings-on at the Stadium of Light. Salut! Sunderland readers who think they know better should make contact and offer their own end-of-season reviews …

Few of us expected the wonderful start made to this last campaign.

Sadly, most of us could have expected from experience to suffer a second half collapse in form that occurred since Christmas and the departure of one Darren Bent.

Irrespective of whether we find the facts comfortable, Bent’s goals even in a lacklustre period for him, accounted for the difference between the first and second halves of the season.

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As Niall Quinn prepares to convene his inquest into the more troubling aspects of a season that ended quite happily, Salut! Sunderland begins its own review of events from August to May. As promised, our contributors are applying their own powers of scrutiny and analysis to the questions of what went right, and what went wrong. M Salut gets the game under way …

First of all, an admission. In the immediate post-match glow of seeing Sunderland rise to a respectable 10th place finish, I overlooked two details: unbeaten in London and ending the season above Newcastle United.

Of course both matter, up to a point. We can be proud of having beaten Chelsea and West Ham away, with draws at Fulham, Arsenal and Spurs. And it is gratifying to remain the top North-eastern club. But I agree with the comment from “Billy the Fish”, which appeared here among responses to Pete Sixsmith’s matchday report from Upton Park, that we should really be concerned with our own performances, our own need for trophies.

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Missing your goals

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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Mrs Logic (before she mucked about with the colours)

Among the many responses to the Salut! Sunderland article headlined Bruce in, Bruce out? Offering a hand to a drowning man was this, an excellent posting from a fellow supporter who called himself simply Moongod, but turns out to be Richard Halma*. He correctly identified this site’s tendency (we’re fans after all) to soar heavenwards after a fabulous performance or during a good run and descend into the depths of gloom when things go less well. Optimism and understanding have every right to be heard as loudly as the clatter of brickbats colliding with targets. We’ve been downbeat – read the Case of the Prosecution. Now turn the coin for a rosier analysis …

Extraordinary. I read the exact opposite of all the negatives here and elsewhere in December. Elmo was a future world beater before Christmas, and now he compares unfavourably to Daryl Murphy …

The recent run of games has been very tough – the easiest on paper being Everton and Stoke away, two places where anyone could struggle to get points.

Couple that run of games (personally, I hoped for 10 points maximum from the last eight) with the loss of Darren Bent, and the absence of various others through injury, and the players have been left low on morale and confidence.

They are still the same players that took us to the heights from which we fall – and nobody was complaining when we were up there.

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So Niall Quinn will hold an inquest at the end of the season to examine what has gone so badly wrong. We know inquests don’t actually have prosecutions and defence, but he could do worse than pore over the comments that appeared here yesterday as a Salut! Sunderland posting on the crisis topped the Sunderland pages at newsnow.co.uk … probably the most eloquently argued contribution, from Moongod, contained the sort of supportive and sympathetic messages Quinn and certainly Steve Bruce may want to hear, and has now been reproduced whole – click here -as the second part of this mini-series. But first, let us hear from Jeremy Robson, who is feeling far from sympathetic and questions a number of the decisions Bruce has taken …

Whenever Sunderland get involved in a relegation scrap, or after a string of bad results, there are invariably questions raised about the capability of the manager to get us out of the poor run and improve our fortunes on the field.

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Mrs Logic captures the gloom

Later today, another Salut! Sunderland contributor will identify one glaring flaw in the Bruce Way (in fact it’s already up by accident so can stay!). One point in 24 undoubtedly leaves the club in crisis, one made all the more painful by memories of the false early-season promise. This site is open to other Sunderland supporters who wish to offer their considered views, as articles or in the Comments field. First, though, I wanted to get this off my chest …

By the sea in France. two hours or so after the final whistle at the Stadium of Light not so much put us out of our misery as plunged us into more, I played a minor part in pulling to safety a four-year-old girl who had fallen into the harbour.

When I say minor, I mean it. A younger, faster man was first to reach her and was able to lean over and grab her hand; I took the other.

It would take a hard man to draw any serious comparison between a child in danger of drowning and the game of football.

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Back in 2006, Sunderland ended a dreadful losing run by beating West Brom (then Championship leaders) 2-0 at home. Just the sort of result that we could all do with tomorrow after, er, another dreadful run. By all accounts, though, we were lucky to get a team out that day …

A quick postscript to the Niall Quinn interview in which he admits that he faced an instant players’ revolt after taking over, briefly, as manager of Sunderland in 2006, when we had just been relegated – with a record low, which Derby County later beat, of 15 points.

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Oh dear. Safc.com was proud as punch to announce that Ellis Short was about to give one of his rare interviews.

And the day we lost 2-0 in utterly deflating fashion at home to Liverpool was the day he chose to deliver a message some Sunderland supporters would now regard as ridiculously upbeat.

“We will be doing everything we can to win those games,” he said of the four remaining home ties after Liverpool: WBA, Bolton, Wigan and Fulham, stressing the need for big crowds. “We are not looking behind us any more at what can happen at the end of the season. We are looking ahead at how far up the table we can climb.”

He also spoke of the match he was about to watch.

It was to be played in front of a near-full house but broadcast internationally {and legally) so that the world would see a packed stadium with passionate supporters. We know what happened next: a damp squib, our fans reduced to silence and early exit when a bright start evaporated, with a little help from abysmal match officials, into abject surrender.

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