Almost every week Pete Sixsmith offers his inimitable seven-word verdict on our games. 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 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

Jan 8 2011 FA Cup Third Round: SAFC (0) 1 Notts County (1) 2* No excuse for failing in such fashion 

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 …

There was a moment in the second half when Craig Gordon clinched my vote.

Despite great admiration for the way Simon Mignolet has performed, and without the slightest doubt that he has a potentially wonderful future which I hope will be with us, I regard Gordon as Sunderland’s No 1 keeper.

* Both images from our old friend addick-tedKevin

The incident I recall was over in a flash, The ball was travelling head height, straight at Gordon but hard and with a Spurs forward’s head inches away. The assurance with which the keeper caught it somehow trumped, for me, the string of saves he had to produce in the first half.

Even the mild criticism I made of his role in the Tottenham goal is tempered by the belief that he can hardly be faulted for seeing the immediate danger as the aerial power of the lurking Crouch.

In all, it was a highly successful return to the Sunderland starting team, fittingly at the ground where last season he suffered a bad injury from a lunge from Defoe that ought to have been punished but wasn’t.

So I am pleased to read Steve Bruce’s comments to the official SAFC site:

“He’s been knocking on my door. He is the number one goalkeeper.

But the one thing I didn’t want to do was take Simon out of the team having had five goals past him.

We’ve tried to protect him a little bit. Craig proved again at Spurs that he’s a very, very good goalkeeper.”

I hope Mignolet can live with the disappointment and draw strength from the fact that Bruce, taking his remarks at face value, clearly does not hold him to blame for events at St James’ Park. And, with an eye to recent speculation, I hope with equal fervour that Craig is not even thinking of himself as being in the shop window.

Monsieur Salut

Our brightest hope at full back since Mickey Gray? But can we hang on to him? Salut! Sunderland ponders the chances of securing Alan Hutton permanently …

Most Sunderland supporters who have seen anything of Alan Hutton are likely to agree that he is just the sort of player we need at the club on a permanent basis.

It has been like a breath of fresh air to see a full back so capable of getting forward and causing serious concern to opposing defences.
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Fair’s fair. With the hindsight not available to most fans – or any referees – when controversial incidents actually occur, Salut! Sunderland accepts that Kevin Friend got the penalty about right. A slightly reckless challenge, but not one that merited a red card. Some SAFC fans go further and echo Spurs supporters (not all) by calling it a dive, even if they also feel it was a penalty “about to happen”. Friends again, Kevin? More on all this later but first Pete Sixsmith delivers his own considered post-match verdict …

A six hour coach journey after a scarcely deserved defeat does an awful lot to concentrate the mind. Somewhere in the middle of the old Great North Road, probably between Newark and Retford, I suffered a terrible attack of fairness, not something usually associated with disappointed Sunderland fans.
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