Fancy dress fails to disguise away form
It’s the one occasion each year that I can sit drinking a pint between Bart Simpson and Freddy Flintstone and not feel uncomfortable.
Sitting in The Beehive with the rest of the red and white army in a vast array of fancy dress, I spent the afternoon willing ill fortune on the sides I want to go down, with impressive success.
I’m pretty ambivalent towards Derby, but from the first day of the season they’ve looked capable of taking our title as the worst side in Premiership history. Thankfully, their 3-1 loss at Blackburn meant reason enough for Mackems to celebrate over the weekend. Our performance two seasons ago might still be bad, but at least we’re no longer the worst.
The other two teams I’d love to see drop are Reading and Birmingham, both of whom edged closer towards the Championship last weekend. Reading have an egomaniac as a chairman and seem concerned only with Premiership survival. That’s fine, they’d be mad not to, but when they field reserve teams in the FA Cup and threaten to do the same if they get to Europe, then you realise that the top flight is just one big cash cow for them.
John Madejski has named pretty much anything he’s invested in after himself, which is annoying enough for his club to deserve the drop. It’s an insult to Reading’s history that the club didn’t name their home ground after one of their former heroes. Their aim for the last two seasons has been nothing else but survival. In my eyes they look set to get what they deserve.
Birmingham are another club who appear to have delusions of grandeur and it’s an away day that I never relish. The city is horrible, dirty and boring and St Andrew’s is no better. There are no pubs for away fans anywhere near the stadium, in fact the only time I’ve ever had a decent sup nearby was in the car park of Morrisons supermarket. Oh and they stung us for £36 (€45) to watch their crap team earlier this season.
Compare that to Bolton’s £21 (€26), a proper club who seems to generally look after its fans and I was almost glad that we gave them a helping hand towards survival. I think the extra couple of hours I spent in the pub because of the 5.15pm kick off aided my generous mood and it’s a good job survival had been guaranteed a week earlier or the scenes in the away end at the Reebok Stadium could have been far worse.
The general consensus was that Sunderland haven’t performed much worse on the road this season. Bolton have spent most of the season in the bottom three and to look as limp as we did was an insult to Sunderland’s fans, who had travelled to the North West in their thousands after being promised the opposite by Roy Keane.
We’ve had a fantastic season, but with each position worth an extra £780,000 (€991,000) in prize money, this was a fantastic chance for us to get some money to pay for a squad member in the summer. Not only that, if we could propel ourselves up the league, it would mean that we’d be attracting players to a club who’d finished in mid-table rather than a place or two above the trap door.
The only skill on the pitch all afternoon was when Bolton brought on a 13-year-old ball juggler at half time, who entertained the crowds so much that most people around me wanted him brought on for us in the second half. The Trotters were just as ugly as us, but wanted it more, which was understandable. At times, though, it felt like I’d gone back to the 1980s to watch Wimbledon. In recent weeks we seem to have gone from playing one very good game to being awful in the next. With Arsenal visiting Wearside to close the season, we need to put on a show to try and entice fans to keep the faith for next season. And to do that, Roy needs his players to have their minds on the football pitch, not the sun and the sea in the Seychelles, as they clearly were at the Reebok.
* Martyn McFadden www.a-love-supreme.com
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