I must confess that in the rollercoaster ride of the last ninety-six hours it had escaped my notice that today’s match was being played this afternoon and I’d assumed that it was an evening kick-off. I couldn’t have followed it anyway as I was working till just before five o’clock and the first I knew of proceedings was when a colleague of mine said, “Do you wanna hear the latest score?” We’d just been talking about the Spurs v West Ham game and I was a bit confused when he said it was 2-2 as I was sure that game had kicked off hours earlier and had finished 2-0. When he added, “Bent’s got a brace” I twigged what was going on. It felt good to discover that we’d got an away draw particularly with a decidedly ravaged squad and I would’ve settled for a point before kick-off. Okay, we let a lead slip away once more and to hear that the equalizer was a concoction of Chimbonda and Diouf didn’t help matters but those guys were just a blink in a Sunderland fan’s eye and an away draw is a good result considering recent form. We’re on an unbeaten two-match run (ha, ha) with every possibility of stretching it to four with Barrow and Bolton coming up.

When I asked the aforementioned colleague, who’s a Spurs fan, how he felt about Robbie Keane, he said, “He can fuck off” and those same two words were used when I recently asked another Spurs fan what he thought of Darren Bent. Speaking of Darren, what a great buy he’s been and if he doesn’t get twenty-five goals this season in all competitions, I’d be very surprised. I rate all of Bruce’s buys so far and I may be in a minority of one but I think Bellamy would be good for us too. It would stop him scoring against us at any rate as he often seems to do. I had a quick word before I left work with Dickson our Ghanaian cleaner to give him the news about his compatriot Mensah’s good performance against Everton and he was pleased. He replied, “If they play well, the people will respect them” and who could argue with that? See you next decade.

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