While not wanting to refer to our manager as a worm, he certainly turned on Friday. Like most people involved with SAFC, whether in an emotional or professional capacity, he got sick of Keane’s unnecessary rantings about our club, which he’s no longer involved with. He got sick and ripped into Keane, and not before time. Not only did he show that he’d had enough, but, perhaps more importantly, it got him in a bit of a temper. I know it’s not in his nature to rant and rave, but this outburst shows he cares and shows his passion. Maybe we have to thank Keane getting Ricky’s dander up. Maybe not.

Anyway, according to Saturday’s Football Focus, we’re part of a North East quartet of teams fighting relegation. While I don’t dispute the relegation bit, putting Hull in the North East is a bit rich, as they’re directly east of Leeds and therefore should be classed accordingly. We all know that Leeds and Sheffield are Northern teams, according to football geography, while Manchester and Liverpool are North Western teams. Carlisle, the most north westerly of the lot, as simply unclassifiable geographically, while we all know who the North Eastern five are, well, sometimes we get York City, but as they’re not in the league we’ll forget about that one.

Whatever, three of the bottom five will almost certainly go down. With the stinkys pathetic capitulation at Anfield and Boro’s loss to Man Utd, we could put a bit more space between us and them. Hull at Villa on Monday night? Nice one.

So we thought.

After drubbings (as Ron Manager would say) SAFC have generally come back with a decent fighting display. That’s what we expected as we congregated in the Station from 10 (the game was an hour late, so we set off an hour early, you work it out. We’re from Bishop, it’s a bank holiday, it’s obvious....). So there was an early Sunday dinner in the Salty (nice it was, too) followed by a few minutes of the mags at Liverpool. Then up to the Kings, where even the Everton fans were shouting for Liverpool, “’cos we’re sick of those up their own arses Geordies”.

Which would have been nice, had we not decided to play like eleven man who had never met before.

Fulop
Bardsley (including parking ticket from Durham on Thursday night) Collins
Davenport Ferdy
Steed Richo Deano Leadbitter
Jones Cisse

When we’d all been expecting Healy to get a start, but that’s football. With Mark Lawrenson predicting a Sunderland victory (daft get), hopes were up, and I bumped into Skinner outside the ground, we exchanged ten seconds of tales of how it used to be in the seventies when football was made of wood and cost thruppence a go, then it was on to the game itself.

Steed and Cahill managed to batter each other early on, meaning that when Steed was eventually allowed back into the fray, he had a full ten pounds of Vaseline on his heid, making him look like Pop Robson.

We did manage to get into their box a few times, notably when Djib cut in from the right and fired in a cross which provided Tim Howard with his only bit of gainful employment of the afternoon as he rolled over after minimal contact from Jones (which is generally what you get). Everton put in a bit of pressure without getting through to Fulop, then Cisse and Deano combined to produce a deep cross that was way too deep but eventually won us a corner. Cisse got in two shots to win another corner, the Grant took a return from Jones to shoot a foot wide. At this point it wasn’t looking too bad, as we were at least on a level with Everton, but there was always the feeling that they were biding their time. Despite David Moyes’s protestations to the otherwise (?) there were a few Blues saving their shins for the FA Cup Final, but the main thing was that they were a team and we weren’t. They knew where to knock the ball when they couldn’t see a team-mate, and we didn’t. Despite Jones winning more heads than in the rest of the season, Cisse was never on the end of one.

Level at the break, and would have taken that at ninety minutes, but it only took a couple of those minutes to allow Pienaar to walk into the box and poke the ball past Fulop. We put together a quick attack, winning a throw then a corner, but the ball always seemed to end up with a blue shirt and going towards our goal. Jones battled well and deserved a bit more luck (or is that just me being romantic?) and when Healy came on for Cisse with 30 to go, presumably so that the former could park up his latest Rolls Royce, but poor David never really got played into the game. Edwards replaced Steed (why not the clearly disinterested Richardson?) as the game slipped from a contest to a farce. Another goal from Everton was really no more than they deserved, and even a bad knock on Ferdy couldn’t raise the team’s spirits.

Like Lampard and Gerrard, we can’t play Leadbitter and Whitehead in the same team. Grant tried, Dean ran his pips off, but the fame fell to bits as far as we were concerned and it was only matter of how many they’d get once we went past 80 minutes.

A truly awful display against a team (that’s the word, TEAM) who knew where their marras were supposed to be and where they were going. We didn’t, simple as that. It’s all down to what other teams do now, not what we do.

Man of the Match? Whitehead. Without his endeavours, we’d have been totally overwhelmed.

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