OK, no messing about. There are two options for you today. Three, actually. Firstly, give up and read the Sunday papers. Secondly, jump to the rest of this supposedly jolly article, (*) or thirdly, just read the next 100 words or so and go back to bed. As a good mate of mine wrote a few weeks back, we supporters are no mugs, and we’ve been around long enough to instinctively know what’s going on.

We can smell what’s wrong with a team, and I’m not referring to that awful smell that wafted through the seats for most of the first half. This team stinks of relegation. We might not achieve it, but that’ll be down to the efforts (or otherwise) of other teams. For the most expensively assembled squad in the history of SAFC, there are far too many opportunities to add the suffix “less.”

Hopeless
Useless
Goal-less
Gutless
Spineless
Heartless
Feckless (that’s a good ‘un)
And most importantly, Pointless

When you looked at the players at our disposal, a win should have been simply a shoo-in, shoe-in, or whatever stupid term football is applying these days. Fulop (no Gordon, strangely, as this would have been his fifteith game for us and another £300k would have gone to Scotland. Not that I’m pointing the finger, like) Bardsley, Collins, Davenport, Ferdy, Teemu, Richardson, Reid, Carlos, Jones, Cisse. Look at that lot. There’s enough talent there to beat West Brom, you would think. Not so. From the moment that I objected to a young lad being given the traditional West Midlands Constabulary treatment for muttering “fer feks sake” under his breath as we were held up on the way to the turnstiles, and spent the first half under their scrutiny, it all went downhill. They must have been rally pissed off that I don’t use homophobic/racist/anything language, because by the time we got to five minutes from the break they gave up pointing at me, Sunderland gave up passing the ball about, and WBA won a corner. No matter that it was a foot out of the D, a la Di Canio, we didn’t clear it, and there were acres of space for Olsson to steady himself in and thump home a volley. To be honest, we still thought, and rightly, that we’d have them in the second half.

No so. From knocking the ball about in the first, we simply fell to bits and produced one of the worst 45 minutes that I’ve had the misfortune to witness. We tried (and I use the word advisedly) with Malbranque, Whitehead, and Healy replacing Edwards. Tainio, and Reid as the game ran down, but there was nothing. Wherever the supposed partner went, Jones and Cisse knocked the ball somewhere else. For me, either one or both of them could bugger off tomorrow and I wouldn’t be upset in the slightest. Richardson did look the business in patches, and managed a swerving shot that need a good save, but was missing when it mattered. As a game, it was awful and sort of justified Mowbray’s efforts to play football despite the lack of points it brings – most weeks.

At the end of it all, and to the disbelief of the Polis, I shook hands with the Baggie I’d been exchanging the most noise with, and wished him all the best, because they deserve something for their effort and heart. We don’t, simple as that.

(*)

Five games to go……and the tension mounts, but not quite as much as it would have had we not beaten Hull last week. As a game of football, it was a bit like the now famous Susan Boyle. Not to bonny to look at, but with a terrific result. Maybe with a bit of a tweak we can do something special as well.

Still no McCartney, and Noz out for the season after twanging another hamstring as the reserves completed their League and Cup double. Well done, Lads. Continuing their pursuit of their League title and the promotion that accompanies it, Sunderland Ladies racked up another 11 goal victory, this time against Villa. Rather ironically, VillaDave’s daughter Nat managed four in that one, including a three-minute perfect hat-trick – left foot, right foot, header. May Day sees them at derby in the FA Cup final against Arsenal. I’m having a day out there, tickets having arrived on Friday, so let’s hope for a decent turn-out from Wearside.

Having had the extra night in Southampton confirmed for our prolonged Portsmouth weekend, we’ve had to get our heads together to work out what to do in Hampshire for three days. Offer Southampton our services as book-keepers, seeing as the last ones they had were a load of crap and have probably cost them their place in the football league. Another one bites the dust.

Now that Keane has decided to return to football, he’s decided that it would be clever to start criticising the way he was allowed to run our team and club. Haway man Roy, you were backed to a higher degree than any other manager in our history and spent the national debt of Mexico with precious little interference, never mind influence, from the board. You’ll never find a chairman as supportive as Niall, so why follow up the slightly over the top interview in December with this nonsense. It stopped working at Sunderland for you, fair enough, so just accept it and accept that it had nothing to do with the board trying to tell you what to do, and keep it zipped. You’re not making yourself look clever, and you’re not doing yourself any favours. I don’t wish Keane any ill at Ipswich, far from it, but it’ll be interesting to see how he manages with a fraction of the funds we provided him with and a bunch of players that he’s already started snarling at.

Early start for Lichfield, and as we’d not had the foresight to inform the polis of which pub we’re booked into (we aren’t “booked in” anywhere, and neither should we have to be) we’re listed on the official polis instructions as “not drinkers.” Talk about living in a police state – if we’re thirty-odd miles from West Brom, what does it matter where the buses stop? What does it matter if they want to go straight to West Brom? Never mind, that’s what the world’s come to, so we read in the papers about the string of break-ins at the homes of prominent football people. Apparently Ryan Giggs lost several FA Cup medals, Premier League Championship medals, League Cup Medals, and Champions League medals. Alan Shearer lost a kettle and a toaster.

Talk in the Queen’s was of whether our solid yet lacking in flair midfield would be changed with Richardson being back to full fitness. The pork scratchings were from a new supplier (Black Country Snacks as opposed to Tony’s of Tamworth) and lacked both the depth of texture and the tattoos, but did provide new shapes, so they were OK. We arrived bang on 11, they were pleased to see us, we drank some of their beer, they were happy, we left in good spirits. Then it turned to shite (go back to the top of the page….)

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