I think that's the best i've seen Oscar play EVER. It looked like he had a point to prove. Wasn't given an awful lot of opportunities this season although when he did, he was rubbish. But it looked like he was given more freedom today and not told to defend so much. Just an observation mind. Anyway, besides him and Willian i thought the rest were pretty average but we definitely deserved the win.
Ahh you shrug your shoulders and laugh. That's football. Fun and games. It''s good to have you back BM. Thoughts on Mourinho coming to United IF it happens. I doubt you'd begrudge him that.
Thanks Treb. I wouldn't begrudge him anything tbh. Still think it was wrong to sack him and certain players should be ashamed of themselves. I was at the game yesterday and gave vent to my feelings. That said, it is a sad indictment on today's game that this seems to happen so often.
Anyone know who the **** DGC is and why he is permanently camped on our board throwing out negative BS? And Oscar was immense
**** knows. I just hope this doesn't carry on for further games. We have made our point to the players, and I hope the board deal with them in the summer. Until then, we have to move on with Gus and try to salvage whatever we can from this season.
No i dont know where he came from. He was alright till he started his mayan calender death cult ****, stating he knew jose would get sacked and wed go crap 15 years ago...
It is strange to be doing a mystic meg about something you posted on a completely different forum, while being new to this one. Who honestly gives a fck?
There certainly was a lot of booing. I didn't hear any chants of "Diego, Diego" all afternoon even though he put in a good shift - he really should have scored right at the end in front of the Matthew Harding Stand in what should have been a simple tap in. I thought it was hilarious the "where were you when we were shit" chant when our players scored. Pure theatre. I was well entertained yesterday.
Oscar is Brazillian, we mustn't lose sight of that fact and he played yesterday as if he was playing for Brazil - with flair, skill and style.
It could also be that the players were given instructions for the previous games that didn't suit their style of play. Most noteably Oscar. As for Sunderland, I always remember my Grandad saying that Sunderland were one of the best football clubs in England right up until World War 2. 'Footballing giants' is what I remember him saying - what went wrong?
Trying to think of a fantastic answer to knock you off your feet, but I can't It's true though, we were also known as the bank of england club too.
My Grandad was from Sussex and he always used to rave about watching Chelsea play Sunderland. Perhaps the demise of the once mighty Sunderland AFC is due to the demise of the lucrative contracts for ship building for the Royal navy?
Ahh, so the real chosen one who was rebuffed for a no famed Scottish joke is now courted by the fickle fans who laughed at the idea at the time. Shame about the long ball clueless Dutch oaf.....
This guy is the bollocks, there's nothing he can't tell you about history... @The Relic I'm interested as well, a bit before my time mate.
FAO Bristol Blue and SAFC83 (and thanks for the plug, SAFC83 - I wish it was true!). I remember some of the firecracker games BB’s grandfather was talking about. One season around 1954/5, we beat Chelsea 4-3 at home and 3-2 away, both nail-biters right up to the final whistle! I remember Chelsea winning their first ever league title in 1955, with Roy Bentley banging goals in like no tomorrow! They were good games. First point - Sunderland never built a lot of ships for the RN. Our river - the Wear - simply isn’t wide enough to launch them. Most of the RN work that got farmed out beyond Deptford usually went to wider rivers like Tyne, Clyde, Mersey, plus Barrow and Belfast. Our success came from small to medium cargo carriers - lots of them, particularly colliers, but also general carriers for everything and everywhere. So Merchant Navy here, rarely ever Royal Navy. Sunderland’s most successful period in football was the 1890s, and it was heavily financed by J. L. Thompson, Jnr (who owned the most successful shipyard here throughout the 1890s) and by Samuel Tyzack who owned a lot of Durham coal mines, plus some iron casting and general engineering firms. But the origin of our success eventually became our downfall. The first and foremost thing you have to understand about Sunderland is that they were renegades. Always. They paid players what they thought they were worth, and generally ignored maximum wage rules. In 1904, several of our Directors were banned for life for illegal payments, and whilst that didn’t entirely end our connection wi th shipbuilding, it certainly removed some of the biggest players in it. Shipbuilding was in slump by the 1930s, and very few yard owners had the money for football any more. Since then, more general traders have joined our Board of Directors. That was fine - for a while. At some point in the 1930s, we were lucky enough to get the best Chairman we’ve had up until Ellis Short. His name was Ted(?) Ditchburn, and I particularly want to mention him here because I believe one of his descendants contributes to this forum - jdsafc? The problem with Mr. Ditchburn (admirable as it was with me!) is that he followed in the fine Sunderland tradition of being a villain. He paid players a decent living wage and to hell with rules. In February 1957, the FA had had enough. They banned him and several other Board members from all football related activity for life, and fully intended to expel Sunderland from the Football League. They stopped short of that, but made it clear that it was only to avoid disrupting that season’s fixture list. Since then, investors in Sunderland have not had the clout of earlier ones, and we’ve had to ‘cut our cloth’ accordingly. That’s really the reason for our decline. Sunderland AFC is really two clubs - before 1957-8 and after 1957-8. There is no resemblance between the two. None.
@Bristol Blue Thanks very much, Relic. I've got so much respect for your football knowledge, always a good read. So basically, we always overachieved before 1958 by spending our way to the top? Once we got pulled up and finally stopped by the FA, we then found our level for the size of club we really are?
Well, we didn't so much over-achieve. The massive enthusiasm for football up here justified the money we spent through gate receipts. The FA just wouldn't allow us to spend it the way we wanted! The maximum wage rule was always daft. (Can you believe that an all-time legend of English football like Len Shackleton actually got paid more as a cricket professional for Wearmouth CC at Southwick than he got playing football for Sunderland and England?!!! That's how bloody daft it was, and anybody who comes on here and says Jimmy Hill did football harm [other than the Coventry incident] is a damned fruitcake. Matthews probably entertained more people live in a year than Frank Sinatra, yet one was a millionaire living up in Bel Air and the other's catching a Blackpool Corporation bus to work? - How the hell could they justify that?) I have to say Sunderland AFC was right, and the FA should have ditched their medieval rule seventy years before they woke up. Once we were found out, we missed opportunities, to be honest. Between 1958 and about 1962, Manchester United hit on the idea of marketing their brand name. It was an idea we could still at that time have benefited from - and we missed it! In fact, we're still not good at it, though I do believe our African initiative will bear fruit - it's a phenomenally rich continent, mineral-wise. As such, we did deserve what we got. What the future brings is anyone's guess.
