David Kelly

The daft thing is, they fell into that league when Ellis Short owned them. Now you would be hard pushed to call Short a good owner of Sunderland because he put his trust in too many wrong people and made too many knee jerk decisions. But he certainly didn't criminally mismanage them like Ridsdale did with Leeds. Short put his hand in his own pocket time and time again and when he left he did it in a way that tried to help them as much as he could, writing off what they owed him. They just constantly wasted the money he gave them. They are now in their third season in league one and are currently showing very little in the way of signs that stay is coming to an end (with the caveat that they are still not a million miles away from being in the promotion picture points wise). As Fish says, the story was their relegation. Their continuing inability get themselves out of the mess they put themselves in is no more of a story than it was for Leeds while they were down there too. And Leeds had a much greater fall from Champions League semis, League Champions just before the start of the premier league era and being a major force English football in the 60's & 70's. Sunderland have had one cup win in the 70's which was their only success since the 30's. About half the rest of the time they spend out of the top flight and have had, I think, 6 top ten finishes since the 40's. They like to write off our credentials with us only having the Fairs cup since the 50's but we've had 7 top ten finishes this century and 8 seasons in some form of European competition (yes I'm including the Intertoto because hey, it's better the Anglo Italian) so we are known around the world. They simply are no more relevant that Shrewsbury who beat them last night.

The league is delaying it to keep them from getting promoted apparently.

Aye the bairn said it was nice and we tried to go but they were rammed.

I don't think anyone does visit it and that's part of the their problem. You hear opposition fans a lot of times saying that they like playing Sunderland away because it's a great night out in Newcastle. Hardly anyone stays there and goes out and it just makes them all the more parochial to the point when anyone who they don't recognise as one of their own is either made to feel uncomfortable or chased out of town. If they opened themselves up to the rest of the world a bit more they might find that it benefits them.

Aye unfortunately my ex missus is from over there so I went out with the bairn for a walk along the coast at Roker and they've put a bit of money into that area and it really is quite decent most of the way along to South Shields. And actually there is some areas just outside the town centre on south side that quite nice too (before you get up to pennywell or pallion obviously), but the town centre itself is a fucking cesspit.

Don't forget the second hand shops too! It's amazing that non of this is a joke. I've had the misfortune of working there quite a bit and their so called city centre really is a shit hole from start to finish. I'm sure they'd try and point their webbed fingers at parts of Newcastle that are also run down but the main shopping street they have resembles Shields Road in the 80's.

Absolutely fantastic by Jimmy this morning proving he is still the best in any conditions. Well done to Leach as well coming back from a spanking off Pant in the first innings. Great result which should give us the confidence to be competitive in the rest of the series.

I don't think it was ever about it being good for us going down, more just that it was that bad supporting us that it just made no difference what division we were in. Existing in the premier league just for the sake of it and watching us camp out on the edge of our own 18 yard box not trying to attack or even pass to our team was becoming unbearable. Fortunately the last few games we've at least seemed to remember the point of us being in the league is try and win some games.

It made no sense to me to carry on batting those last few overs. What if Anderson, Leach, Archer or Bess had took a knock to the hand and they couldn't bowl. The ten runs or so we got from the last few overs will make no difference but we would have been fucked if we lost one of those bowlers, not to mention the additional few overs bowling could be crucial. I don't get it at all. With all that said, there was 15 wickets today 9 more on a day five pitch should be well within our capabilities.

Always thought it was baffling that we signed him after he was average on loan in the championship.

It's amazing how he got 400+ runs in Sri Lanka sweeping virtually everything and barely swept anything this morning. Hopefully he can keep this form going for the rest of the year!

From what I've read, they're talking up Willock as a box to box midfielder. The nearest we have to that is Hendrick so on that basis he should be the one to leave out. But ASM must now be about ready to start. At that point surely we must be looking to play him and Fraser either side of Wilson. So the question becomes two from Hayden (no chance), Shelvey, Hendrick and Almiron to leave out for ASM and Willock. I know which two I'd pick, certainly at home to a very depleted Southampton, but I supect cabbage head will go with Hendrick and Almiron.

Don’t think it’s on sky

As much as I think Hendrick is shite, I think Bruce would have been better leaving him on and taking off Shelvey or Hayden last night. All that substitution did was to make it more congested in our attacking areas and have the remaning two midfielders sitting on top of the centre backs. Hendrick was at least breaking forward and I think that movement helped create more space. The further substitutions made space even less available. It was blatently obvious to everyone, apparently apart from and Shelvey, that what was happening was just slowing everything down and allowing Palace to get back a deny us space. Still I didn't want to poke my eyes out while watching so things definitely have improved.

Apparently they're taking the world feed of comentary which will certainly mean more Indian bias and the dregs of sky's comentary (Nick Knight, Mark Butcher) which is a bit of a shame. For all the shite in football comentary, Nasser, Atherton, Bumble etc do provide excellent comentary on England cricket.

I might stick with Saturday's approach of not watching this.

You could see in the second half last night that if we can keep Wilson, Fraser and ASM fit and on the pitch we could well have enough to stay up even with Hendrick in midfield behind them. Clearly though this is despite Bruce not because of any tactical masterstroke of his. In the first half the only hope we had of doing anything in an attacking sense was if Schar brought the ball out of the back and bypassed the midfield. I don't for a second think that this was something they had worked on, but it might actually be a good thing to look at since he has more ability on the ball that any of our midfielders. I can't see that there's any chance of Bruce being sacked any time soon with us bringing this new coach in. He'll probably get the chance to double this non winning run before there's any hope of him getting the bullet.

We certainly don't want to see an end to any of our current players like what happened to Trott in Australia.

Bairtstow seems to have been brought back into the team because he's a decent player of spin as much as anything else. If that's the case then it seems odd to rest him when we're going to have our biggest spin test rather than in the home series later on or the short form matches. Although I suppose he's being kept for the World Cup as much as anything.

Yeah, I mean I get this is exceptional circumtances but the South Africa trip was cut short so surely they haven't had too hard a time of it recently. And surely Sri Lanka was a better time to rest players. Although I suppose with Pope being injured, Burns being on paternity and Stokes and Archer rested there's only so many changes the could have made.

I can certainly get resting Wood given his fitness issues and Curran as been bubbled up for long period with England and the IPL and I'm not convinced he'd be that important a player in India for us. But I don't get Bairstow or Buttler at all.

Michael Vaughan was going on about it on TMS and I'm sure he said Buttler was only there for the first test. The other three you mention are missing the firts two that's right.

He's looking a better and better test player all the time. Shame he's only playing one against India.

Hopefully the pathetic stance with the press will finally see us getting some backup instead of the usual he's a nice bloke guff.

Fiar play to Sibley. Looked all over the place for 3 (very short) innings but he dug in brilliantly today. Having Butler with him no doubt massively helped. Good news heading to India.