You will probably have seen the little fundraising football prediction competition that the club runs, the Lucky 7 as it is laughingly called. Only have to predict the results of seven games, usually from the Premier League. Not that hard you would think, but it turns out to be a good deal tougher than you imagine. There is always somebody, usually Man United or Chelsea to be fair, who lets you down. And of course most punters blindly support Sunderland to win, with the entirely predictable outcome. Bit like the rest of life in fact. I mention this in a spirit of sadness as I thought I had knocked it off the other week, only to be frustrated in Bournemouth. Not the first bloke that has happened to. Still we try again.
On paper a good result for our bold lads on Saturday, at the new moneybags of the league, although I am informed that had we took our chances early on we could have been out of sight. Clinging on by the end though. Overall the form is a bit of a worry. The past few games have seen not many points collected, hopefully it's just a blip, and still plagued by injuries which doesn’t help at all. Evidently the developments at South Shields are very good, good for the game as well, no such thing as bad publicity, and rising tides lift all boats, to quote a couple of platitudes, and we will at least make a few quid when they come to sunny Ryhope. Unless the bubble has burst by then, which knowing our luck.
And our cousins over the water still struggle, reliant on Defoe, unable to defend, and the dour Scot doesn’t exactly lift your spirits does he? Might be wishing he had stayed in Spain, could have been having a beer with big Sam this week. Could you make the England fiasco up? Not that he did much wrong as far as I can see. Took the proverbial out of Mr Woy, haven’t we all, pointed out you could drive a coach and horses through FA regulations, no surprise, and said yes he would like to make £400k for 10 minutes work, thank you very much, but would have to run it past his bosses; who among us would have said no? And Sunderland end up the snookered ones.