I didn’t think I’d have any chance to see or listen to today’s match as I’m at my sister’s house in a small Spanish town but help came in the shape of two Newcastle supporters Christine and Paul, my sister’s mates who own Bombers Bar in Javea about fifteen miles away. They’ll be showing the match live there at 5 p.m. local time and I’ll be sitting beneath the Sunderland A.F.C. pennant above the bar while sampling their fine selection of draught and bottled booze. From what I gather it looks like Mensah and Da Silva won’t be starting while Ferdinand and McCartney will be and I’m not pleased about that. Mensah is captain of a side that’s already qualified for the World Cup while Da Silva played a stormer recently when Paraguay defeated Argentina so what exactly have they got to prove in terms of experience? There’s a big question mark about Cattermole so I hope he makes it on to the bench at least. Tuesday’s match against Birmingham was a stroll and Wolves will be no pushover but I think we’ll win and I’m going for 3-1. We really need to be beating teams like Wolves if we expect to improve on last season’s finish. It looks like only Halford from the Sunderland old boys will be starting for Wolves and I can’t imagine him getting much applause from the crowd but, despite everything, I think Mick McCarthy deserves a modest ripple. I was pleased we drew Villa in the League Cup as I doubt if they’ll be very interested in the tie and I think we’ll beat them too and get into the last eight of the competition.

There’d been a terrific thunderstorm going for several hours as we set off to drive to Javea and our Linda did excellent work in driving us literally through hell and high water to Bombers Bar. We arrived ten seconds before kick-off and very soon I was slurping a pint of Mahou as it chucked it down outside. The first thing I noticed was that Mensah was on and very soon Da Silva and Cattermole emerged from the ruck of players. This was all to the good and after eight minutes things got better as Bent put us one-up from the spot. It looked a clear penalty to me but all Sunderland penalties look clear penalties to me. The only dodgy aspect was that as the storm continued to rage the satellite signal kept coming and going but fortunately we had the picture as Bent slotted it perfectly into the bottom left-hand corner. Around the quarter-hour mark we were piling on the pressure when suddenly there was a power-cut and the whole neighbourhood went dark. In the absence of any soccer news I was forced to speculate and I reckoned that by the half-hour mark we’d be two-up with Kenwyne getting the goal and this would be the score at the break though Wolves would’ve rallied during stoppage-time. Another facet of the blackout was the absence of draught beer and so I resorted to a bottle of Newcastle Brown.

The second half started and still there was no electricity and the rain, which had eased off for a while, rallied for another attack. I hoped that back at the SoL we were doing the same. The landlady Christine texted her Mag brother back on Tyneside to try and ascertain the score but presumably he didn’t understand why she wanted to know how Sunderland were doing and no reply was forthcoming. She finally called him and informed me that we were 2-0 up, both penalties, but I wasn’t bothered about that. I tried to get online but in vain and at 6.30 it looked like I’d have to wait till we got home before I could catch up on the score. Meanwhile back in fantasyland I was confident that we’d be 3-0 up. With Mensah, Da Silva and Cattermole in the team I’d decided to reassess my earlier prediction. The storm was getting decidedly worse and we resolved to try to get home while we still could but I was confident that we’d end up winning the match. Anyway, I was pleasantly stunned to discover the final score was 5-2. As I’m typing this now the thunder is roaring round the building and I’m sure back on Wearside there’s a fair bit of roaring going on too. Bring on Man U.

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