Friday Night/Saturday Morning

At last, after what seems like an age, we’re back to the real stuff but I won’t be at the game and am working tomorrow too so I’m counting on Setanta to do the business for me in darkest Surrey. Like everyone else I’ve got mixed feelings about the summer signings, not that I think the players we’ve acquired aren’t any good – quite the reverse – but we’re still lacking in several crucial departments and that’s a worry. I thought Diouf was great when he played against us for Bolton back in May and he was clearly a crowd favourite there. He’s going to be doing his best to annoy Liverpool and he certainly knows how to upset people. There’s a slight possibility that we might have Benni McCarthy upfront but I can’t see it happening. At least our strikers all managed to get a few goals in the pre-season friendlies and so they’ve got some confidence. I’m trying not to think of what Torres and Keane could do to our back four and the hoped-for presence of Jonny Evans will be much missed. I still think that we might get him and suspect that Ferguson is just making Keano suffer for a few recent adverse comments. Well, I’m off to Waterloo.

The Match

Everything went blank on the football front till I entered the Griffin in Claygate just before 5pm. and ordered a pint of Strongbow after confirming that the match would be shown there. The crowd of screaming kids next to me soon left, as did a tableful of horse-racing fans on the other side of the room and I was left almost alone with the Setanta match preview. I was glad to see that the four main new signings were in and the side looked solid. I was joined by an old Boxer dog that flopped down to sleep next to me and then another football fan pulled up a chair and it turned out that he was Sunderland-born too. As the teams prepared to kick off Tainio gobbed all over his chin and had to wipe it off, a lot more practice needed there, Teemu son.

We dominated the first half and I was very pleased with our performance, which was typified by repeated examples of our players seeming to lose control of the ball but then getting up off their arses and battling forward again to keep the move going. The four new signings all looked good with Diouf and Chimbonda particularly impressing me and the whole side displayed a distinct improvement in skill as well as even more bite than usual. I don’t think Gordon touched the ball till midway through the first half, which says a lot. Our best chance came in the 12th minute when Diouf put in a great cross and Murphy didn’t quite get enough power and accuracy on his header. We were lucky to avoid a penalty award against us in the 32nd min. when Liverpool were awarded a free-kick for a foul against Gerrard outside the box rather than a spot-kick for Chimbonda’s subsequent foul. At half-time a guy at the bar, who was one of those blokes whose every word was heard by everyone else in the place, announced that, “Sunderland have played exceptionally well.” I wasn’t going to argue.

The game was much more end-to-end in the second half and gradually Tainio, Malbranque and Diouf were substituted by Whitehead, Edwards and Chopra. With ten minutes to go I was seriously entertaining hopes of a 0-0 draw, which I would’ve been happy with as we’d failed to get a point off any of the top four teams last season. Then Alonso nearly caught us out with a punt from around the half-way line and Gordon ended up in the net, before Torres showed why he should never be given an inch when he scored the winner from just outside the box after our defence failed to close him down. We kept on fighting but I wasn’t expecting any change from that Liverpool defence and we didn’t get any.

Still, I was pleased with our overall performance and thought we were clearly a cut above last season’s team. If we’d managed to sign our quality central defender and striker we could well have won this… let’s see what the next seven days bring. See you at Spurs next week.

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