Benwell Lad

If Ashley reckons he's Billy Big Balls with all his shops and money and everything then how come he's not on Coronation Street like the Everton chairman ? Europe my arse. It's Weatherfield we need to be in.

Feel sorry for them. Little clubs like Wigan and Sunderland always seem to get a rough deal off the authorities. Just not fair if you ask me.

Howay lads if Pards and the boys can get to Europe we can get to 51%.

Lech Pils, Mocny or Premium? 41,8 % ! Yeah that'll do for starters then we'll get the vodka out of the freezer !

Done. 41.6% Mine's a Lech when you get the beers in Baczek

Anne Metcalf, 57, sales assistant, said: "Newcastle are just as bad. Anywhere is just as bad." err....nah pet. A comprehensive survey found macums to be the fattest supporters in the PL and Newcastle came a healthy 16th out of 20. Still, don't let the truth get in the way of a bit of mackemism.

Classic mackemism.

Classic macumism

Bumped re Bilbao. Having watched Athletic versus Man U and Schalke recently I'd say red and white stripes are the only thing the two reams have in common.

They've been practically forcing them and unsuspecting Chinese men and women at the university all season. It's the remaining few who still pay for entry that I feel sorry for.

The day we judge success (or lack of it) by comparing ourselves to a small, perennially failing club like Sunderland is the day to pack it all in.

There's a thread on the RTG site about free school tickets which confirms they are dishing them out as far north as Edinburgh. Is there no geographic limit to their desperation ? Have they completely lost any remaining dignity they had ?

Why do you have to be an established premier league team to play decent football? Swansea are playing their football on the ground and will stay up, Norwich are playing some decent stuff as well. At the end of the day Pulis chose to play this kind of football and the majority of your fans have accepted it (cheering a throw in for f***s sake). I'd have thought Stoke fans would have got used to the comments on their style of play, but obviously not if you have to register onto another teams forum to moan about it. Man up, take part in the discussion or f*** off. Re: the cheering of earned throw-ins. I'm sure most neutral observers would've rip the piss out of that, in some form. Due to the audio technology during a live telecast (where a localised chant/jeering can be made out be to be more prominent that what it actually is) i've avoided tarnishing the lot of them with a wide-sweeping brush. But some of them have truly been brainwashed over time, and are true believers of Reverend Pulis' maverick way . It's in the name of banter but there's a more serious edge as well, but some of them at least, are the football supporters' equivalent of the dedicated populace (ie. Lemmings) that once graced the wild setting that was Jonestown. As I've said previously I couldn't watch it week in week out, but it's actually quite exciting watching Delap bomb a throw into a penalty area populated by the other 20 players on the pitch. Particularly when it's not your own team defending it.

Even for a club like Sunderland where legends are so thin on the ground that an average/poor player can be granted such status for merely kissing the badge or uttering the hilarious FTM, their habit of initially sucking up to managers, chairmen and even directors, before ultimately turning on them like a rabid lynch mob is both unusual and amusing. I can think of no other set of fans who give Ferguson/Shankly/Clough type adoration to every new manager so easily and hail every new incumbent as "the one who will finally take us to the next level", before it so inevitably and predictably goes plop. They are still clinging defiantly to the belief (assisted by the fawning media) that Marty is going to be the one to lead them to the promised land, despite a form table which shows them to be little or no better off than they were under Brucey. "Nothing left to play for" cry the defiant fans and overly sympathetic media. Really? Half decent performances against WBA, Blackburn, Spurs, Everton, Wolves etc could have had them in 7th place. Instead another bottom half finish looks likely. They'd do themselves a big favour if they took a slight grasp on reality and saw the flukey results they achieved during the usual "new manager surge" for what they really were and realised that the inept, heartless and tactically inept performance they witnessed at their "biggest game in decades" against Everton in the cup is probably a truer reflection of where the O'Niell revolution has taken them so far.

Although I couldn't watch it regularly, a couple of times a season playing against a Stoke or an old Wimbledon set up is quite interesting. Their up and at 'em style often keeps the crowd on the edge of their seats and is arguably a better spectacle than the dreary keep possession and make countless passes in your own half while never actually threatening style employed by Swansea, which is so admired by many. I really enjoyed our game away to Stoke this season where we beat them by playing football but also beat them at their own game, outfighting them in the scraps, and Danny Simpson's ball drying routine towards the end was just the icing on the cake.

Will be the norm again with waiting list returning, if we keep this going and HBA and others continue to provide those "special moments".

Do you mean the LEAZES END which is at the north end of ST. JAMES' PARK ?

So the mackems are yet to realise that after the usual brief new manager upturn and a few flukey results, what they have seen versus WBA, Blackburn, Everton (twice), Spurs, Wolves etc etc is actually their real level and that their manager is a stubborn, past his sell by date fraud who makes Big Sam look tactically astute. Great. Never mind, their rapidly losing interest, American hedge fund operating owner who bought them on the (very) cheap, is going to sanction a major overhaul of Saint Niall and the previous manager's fat bloated, massively overpaid, underperforming, long term contracted squad, who of course will be going nowhere very soon voluntarily. Brilliant. FTM.

If I had to sit through shite like that I'd demand my 5 quid back.

http://www.insideworldsoccer.com/2012/04/marius-ebbers-hand-of-god-goal.html

He has been the only Sunderland chairman to say it but I'm certain that all the others (especially "One seat more" Murray) thought it.

So that's it then. The reasons Sunderland's attendances are dropping like a stone despite all the free and cheapy tickets are :- 1. Most of their catchment area is under the North Sea. 2. Everyone is Northumberland,County Durham,the Scottish borders and Cumbria is a plastic mag who had never heard of football before 1992. 3. Everyone on Wearside is unemployed. 4. Those still in employment would rather watch football down the pub. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with the awful football which is O'Niel's trademark, their stadium being an atmosphereless plastic arena largely populated by low lives or the fact that their star player prefers the Dubai Sunday League to playing (and living) on Wearside. That's right.

It's like he threw every cliche going into a mix with some Wikipedia research and came up with an article.

As always, Stoke have nothing to play for.. very much doubt they'll be giving away monnaie for injured opposition. And if anything, De Jong will be mindful of his tackles on Ben Arfa. He's a brutal player but he's not a brainless chav like Catts for example.. He may have more of footballing brain on his shoulders, but he's still instinctively brutal though. Players like that are untrustworthy. Yep. He doesn't go out to hurt players when he plays football but when he plays football, he will hurt players. Catts completely loses the plot, there's no discrimination as to who he targets, and his action is usually worthy of a straight red. Hence the inference that he is lacking a football brain. DeJong is instinctively brutal. When he targets a ball-carrier he hits them at pace, he leaves nothing to spare. But there's a large degree of premeditation in what he does. He'll sacrifice an early yellow as a means of laying into opposition's most creative ball-carrier. It's all about sewing a seed of doubt into the head of such a player (whether it be HBA etc), get them hearing footsteps for the rest of the game. If there's an influential creator anywhere in his vicinity you cannot trust him. If football was properly refereed and governed thugs like Cattermole and De Jong, who intentionally go out to injure opponents, would not be making a living out of the game. Sadly they still are.

http://www.readytogo.net/smb/showthread.php?t=691147 I think they may possibly be even more obsessed with attendances than they are about our club. However it has to be said their gates have dropped considerably over the last few years despite the supposed optimism. All the cheap/free tickets probably mean the receipts (which are more important than the attendances) will have taken a huge dive. Not looking good for them. On a lighter note some macums are absolutely bending over backwards to help anyone get a cheap ticket for their remaining games, offering their season ticket numbers to any old Tom, Dick or Harry in a desperate effort to fill the empty seats. I think Randy Savage on RTG is so desperate he would even lay on transport from anywhere in the UK to help someone get there.