Sunderland Away And Final Thoughts On The Olympic Stadium

No sale, Daniel

Good day one and all, let’s start from the start shall we? So we’ve lost out to the Spammers in the race to occupy the Olympic Stadium in Stratters. I’ll be short on this one as I’m as bored of the rest of you of all the pro/anti brigades and their repetitive rhetoric on the matter, but neither outcome would have been greeted with either happiness or disappointment by moi. Just call me one big purgatorial shrug job if you like (go on, do it), but I could no more get on board with the ‘it’s Tottenham innit, clue’s in the f**kin’ name bruv’ lot, as I could wholly embrace moving to East London. Were there ever any fully paid up members of the pro-Stratford movement? Those who really wanted to go there more than anything, or just those, like me, who would have backed it because it seemed to be the most sensible option? More rhetoric? Let’s just hope we don’t embarrass ourselves with a lengthy appeal and just get back to the overworked drawing board.

Focussing on things closer to the realm of originality, there’s an away trip to Slumberland to talk about, and it’s not going to preview itself. The home fixture, as I’m sure you’ll remember, came a week after our infamous win over Inter Milan and gave a lot of those unable to make it for that game a chance to get a ticket to see the new European Champions elect. Sadly, like that kids party I was really excited about when I was at school because he had a pinball machine in his conservatory, I got my timing all wrong, turned up too late for the main event and left massively disappointed. Incredulous that they hadn’t seen another total football performance, the confused ticket holders booed as the final whistle sounded, prompting Redknapp to label all Tottenham fans ‘ungrateful ‘erberts’ (or something similar) and fell just short of rolling out his favourite points to games statistic. The 1-1 draw on the night was incredibly frustrating, especially as we’d spent over an hour trying to break them down, finally did so, only for them to equalise 3 minutes later and hold on.

Onto the away trip and, for a change, there are more injuries than you can shake a stick at for our mob. Bale and Modric will be given every chance of flying to Milan by being oxygen tented and butterfly kissed back to health from now until then so don’t even dream about seeing them make an appearance. VdV pulled out of the Holland squad as his wonky calf went ‘ping’ again last weekend, so our hero from last Saturday, Niko Kranjcar might just get that start he’s been hankering after. If Crouch is fit, be prepared to see him playing up on his tod with a midfield 5 of Peanut-Krankie-Wilson-JJ-Lennon. If he doesn’t make it, the Pav-Defoe combo will be unleashed to massive or zero effect. There is no middle ground with these scallywags.

After the gloom of our transfer non-activity and before our recent couple of victories, Sunderland were being mooted as a threat to our position in the upper reaches of the table, and despite the disappointing home defeat to Chelski, they are having a very good season. They’ve been un-Bent, but such has been the impact of Gyan, the cries of a wounded Steve Bruce after Dazza’s surprise move to Villa, fell largely on deaf ears as they continued their ascension. The flip-flopping Keiran Richardson has been scoring for fun recently, so both our full backs had better be on their game, while we can only hope ol’ Steed doesn’t come back to haunt us.

So predictions then? I’m on quite the roll at the moment with no less than TWO correct score line predictions in a row. Observe:

Blackburn Away: More in hope than expectation, let’s go for a 0-1. Back to basics and one of our forwards to soften the blow of missing out on deadline day with a beaut’ of a goal.

Bolton Home: Following my one-in-a-row correct score prediction, sell your houses and get all your money on a 2-1 victory for the Totters.

Not quite as confident about this one so I’m going to go for a 2-2, but will happily break my run for 3 points.