Born on this day is former Scotland international and Sunderland forward, Ally McCoist. It’s safe to say that McCoist played his best football after leaving Wearside, where he joined Rangers. A lot of football fans don't even know that Ally was a Sunderland player! The young striker joined the lads from St Johnstone at just 18 years old. Manager Alan Durban had managed to fend off competition from a number of clubs to sign the highly-rated McCoist. He showed a lot of promise, and upon signing...

Alkmaar proved to be talented opposition but we deserved our win. If this is Europa League, give me more. BEFORE I'm old enough to remember those games against Vasas Budapest and Sporting Lisbon back in 1973 and it sounds strange to me when I keep hearing that it was all fifty-three years ago. I'm very happy that we're back in Europe again but I have to say that the structure of the competition is still a bit of a mystery to me. I'm just looking at it as a beautiful bonus to what's already a...

This wasn’t a memorable game but Talbi’s winning goal was one to remember. This was obviously something of a practice match but it’s always good to win and I think we deserved it on the whole. It’s always nice to progress in cup competitions. BEFORE Last year we made an ignominious exit from this competition at the first stage when we lost at home to Huddersfield so I'm hoping for better things this evening. No doubt we'll see a much-changed side from that which started against Brentford and...