So, one good win (Spurs), a hard earned draw (Brum), worrying defeats at Wigan and Luton and two more defeats playing reasonably well against top quality sides in Liverpool and Man Utd, and we know we are in for a tough slog of a season. But for me there are some good signs that maybe we will have enough to consolidate our status as a Premiership side come the end of the season. Unfortunately I think the idea of a European spot may have to be put on hold.

There have been a good few moans about the lack of big signings at Sunderland, but we face a lot of obstacles in enticing big name players to SAFC. I suspect that there are footballers out there who turned down the chance of playing for us because their inflated egos couldn't cope with the thought of playing for a man whose boots they aren't fit to lace. Secondly neither Sir Niall nor Sir Roy is daft enough to pay ridiculous wages to anyone, no matter how big the name, and if they did, this must have a knock on effect on the other players.

Would you work your bollocks off for 90 minutes if you were being paid a good wedge less than some lazy prima donna with immaculate hair, perfect teeth and an occasional footballing trick or two? I think not. The transfer market has gone gradually but spectacularly pear shaped since English clubs flung open their doors to legions of foreign players with the promise of shed-loads of English pounds, and home grown talent wasn't too slow to jump on the bandwagon, so now even average players can demand a weekly wage greater than many of us earn in a year.

The other problem we seem to have is geographical. As Sir Roy said, some players won't make the move to the SOL because the WAGs want to live in Knightsbridge and spend their bloke’s cash in Harvey Nicks. They still have the notion that North Easterners live in caves and keep ferrets down their trousers, and they wouldn't have the brains to find out that Durham is much cuter than London. Last but not least is that players don't have any vision. A lot of them would probably view a move to Sunderland as a gamble which would upset their pampered little lives, instead of seeing it as a challenge that could well end up with them being part of something big and clever. So all those players who have not signed for us are stupid, vain, overvalued and have no balls, so they can all fuck off.

Going off at a tangent, substitutes don't just take off their trackie top, scratch their bollocks and then run onto the pitch anymore, they are made to read pieces of paper thrust under their noses by coaches and managers. I find this quite strange and amusing. First off, most footballers (excluding those at SAFC) are not the sharpest knife in the box and probably don't understand a word they're being asked to read. There was a cracking example at the Smoggies v Mags game as McDermott was showing a total bemused substitute a big piece of paper, and from the lad's face I can only assume that old Terry was saying “Look I've drawn a house and a tree, and I'm going to do a shiny sun when I can find my yellow crayon.” Or maybe he had written a list of pizzas the lad might fancy as a post match snack. Who's to know? Do super-subs have to be shown a post-it note with “Score a goal” written on it? It's a mystery isn't it?

Just a final bit left over from the tour of Ireland, we were introduced to hurling in Dublin, which is very, very fast and is played by hard bastards holding big sticks on which they quite often juggle a small, rock hard ball before smashing it about the field at great velocity. As we watched our first All Ireland quarter final my better half turned to me and said “Bloody hell, it's the egg and spoon race on speed.” Well summed up, pet.

Dave Joyce