[That_Guy]

Originally Posted by ctrl-alt-delete

Onwards and upwards, big test will be the derby, we'll see the real difference between Bruce and O'Neill then.

I reckon it'll only be a 4-1 drubbing this time out.

PARDEW OUT!!!

You gonna be at the derby yourself pal?

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Originally Posted by That_Guy

I reckon it'll only be a 4-1 drubbing this time out.

PARDEW OUT!!!

You gonna be at the derby yourself pal?

No, I'd have no way of getting a ticket unless I sat with the home fans!, think you need 10pts and I have none! Will have to wait until next year at the SoL!

[Kingdom Bhoy]

Originally Posted by ctrl-alt-delete

No, I'd have no way of getting a ticket unless I sat with the home fans!, think you need 10pts and I have none! Will have to wait until next year at the SoL!

I'm going to the Sports Direct Arena the tickets are like gold dust.

[Kingdom Bhoy]

MON on James McClean " He's a hero back in Derry. He only had to make his debut to be that. The number of clubs in quick succession we've been to this season who've said they were close to signing him. Well you didn't ! We got him and we are really pleased we did. "

[ctrl-alt-delete]

I know Campbell needs to be rested, but it never really worked when Bruce played Sess up front on his own,

That's how they line up today, with 3 strikers sitting on the bench, but it is good however to see that Meyler starts!

Sunderland

22 Mignolet
02 Bardsley
04 Turner
11 Richardson
16 O'Shea
07 Larsson
08 Gardner
14 Colback
18 Meyler
23 McClean
28 Sessegnon

Substitutes

20 Westwood
03 Bridge
25 Kyrgiakos
27 Elmohamady
09 Campbell
10 Wickham
17 Ji Dong-Won

[Kingdom Bhoy]

Good piece on SAFC on http://www.squarefootball.net/

[Kingdom Bhoy]

Another well deserved win yesterday lets hope for a good cup draw today.

[Paully D]

Fantastic stuff since O'Neill has taken over, I genuinely think we beat anyone these days. Of the games we've lost, they've been to Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal, amazing stuff really considering we couldn't buy a win against bottom half and mid-table teams before O'Neill.

He's proved me wrong from day one and I'm embarrassed I wanted Hughes in when Bruce left.

Long may this continue.

Hoping for a kind draw in the QF later but no doubt we'll end up with Spurs away or something like that.

In other news, Matthew Upson stated last season ''I'm too good for Sunderland''. We offered £6m and he refused to come. A year later he's taken West Ham down and ended up on a poor deal at Stoke. Well done Matthew

"Sunderland, a year last summer, wanted Matthew Upson, and they offered us £6 million for him. I accepted it because there was a year left on his contract. He was the second highest paid player at the club. It would be wrong to say what he was on, but he was the second highest paid player at the club. Sunderland offered him a four year contract on the same money and a little bit more. He said: “I’m too good for Sunderland”. [ID laughs]. A year later he’s got a two year contract off Stoke on under half the money that Sunderland offered him, so perhaps he should have gone to Sunderland It would have definitely helped the club, because I don’t think his contribution in our relegation season was fantastic. And it would have got us £6 million pounds in."

http://www.westhamtillidie.com/

Source: David Sullivan, West Ham owner

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Great performance yesterday, the energy and commitment levels are unreal, typical of an O'Neill team.

Hope the draw is kind, maybe Leicester would be a good one for O'Neill.

Very dissappointed with the attendance yesterday, just over 26,000 there yesterday, and 4,000 of those were Arsenal fans. The club have been unlucky in that all the FA Cup games have been on the TV so far, plus the Arsenal league game being so close to the cup one.

Have my tickets booked for the Liverpool game, so looking forward to that.

I agree with you Paully in that I think on the day they can beat anyone, which is great for a cup run! Sunderland haven't had a decent cup run in years!

I heard from someone yesterday that McClean wasn't really a Bruce signing, it was more Quinn and a head scout, with Bruce wanting money for N'Zogbia, and the reason McClean hadn't been seen until O'Neill took over was sour grapes on Bruces' part - I wonder how much truth is in that?

[Paully D]

Originally Posted by ctrl-alt-delete

Great performance yesterday, the energy and commitment levels are unreal, typical of an O'Neill team.

Hope the draw is kind, maybe Leicester would be a good one for O'Neill.

Very dissappointed with the attendance yesterday, just over 26,000 there yesterday, and 4,000 of those were Arsenal fans. The club have been unlucky in that all the FA Cup games have been on the TV so far, plus the Arsenal league game being so close to the cup one.

Have my tickets booked for the Liverpool game, so looking forward to that.

I agree with you Paully in that I think on the day they can beat anyone, which is great for a cup run! Sunderland haven't had a decent cup run in years!

I heard from someone yesterday that McClean wasn't really a Bruce signing, it was more Quinn and a head scout, with Bruce wanting money for N'Zogbia, and the reason McClean hadn't been seen until O'Neill took over was sour grapes on Bruces' part - I wonder how much truth is in that?

I think we'd have to confident of beating Leicester (home or away), Bolton (home or away), Stoke (home or away), Everton (home) and I personally think we'd be beaten by Chelsea, Spurs or Liverpool no matter where we play them.

I'd ideally want, in order from top to bottom:

Leicester
Bolton
Stoke
Everton
Liverpool
Chelsea
Spurs

So, Spurs away it is then

Yeah the McClean story is spot on, I remember reading the article about it a few weeks ago, here it is:

http://www.irishpost.co.uk/index.php...d-his-stripes-

THE Derry man has clearly turned things around at Sunderland. In relegation trouble during the dying embers of the Steve Bruce era, they have since steadily moved into mid-table, their self-esteem and points total improving week-by-week.

And while it would be an exaggeration to pin the upturn on one man and one man only, the reality is that since his arrival, Manchester City have been scalped, Blackburn, Peterborough and Wigan seen off and memories of just two victories from Bruce’s 14 league and cup games have faded away.

So yes, James McClean does deserve credit for Sunderland’s rebirth … as does the club’s other Foyleside-son, Martin O’Neill. Yet while O’Neill’s story is the one everyone knows, McClean’s has still to be told.

At 23, the image of this ashen-faced, 5'11", 11-stone rookie, conjured up different things to different people. Some – the scouts from West Ham, Tottenham, Everton and amusingly from a Sunderland perspective, Newcastle, saw a raw winger with an imperfect touch who ran all over the place.

But others, Peterborough’s Barry Fry and Wigan’s Kevin Reeves, reckoned they had stumbled upon a still-developing athletic prodigy, surrounded by not too much talent in the League of Ireland who was ready to take the big leap across the water. Fry went so far as to agree a fee with the Derry City board before McClean turned him down, believing a better deal was on the way. And while Reeves, who watched him four times, urged his board to take a punt, they backed away, deliberating over their options before buying an unheralded Frenchman, Nouho Dicko, instead.

Sunderland, meanwhile, sent their chief scout, Bryan Pop Robson, to the Lansdowne Road at the end of July to watch McClean play for an Airtricity League XI against Manchester City in one of those games where the result didn't matter but the performance did – especially to McClean who knew his career was on the line.

Yet guess what happened? The wannabe had a stinker. None of his tricks came off. The service to him was appalling. Manchester City – one of the best teams in the world – dominated not just the game but him.

But, 65 minutes into that match, Robson turned to the man sitting beside him and whispered: “I’ve seen enough. We’ll sign him.”

The man – McClean’s agent - was astounded. “But he’s been ……”

“Trying endlessly,” interrupted Robson. “He’s won more than his fair share of headers. He’s showed a few things. The rest we can coach.”

Two weeks later, the coaching began in earnest. Niall Quinn, then Sunderland’s chairman, backed Robson’s judgement and invested £350,000 of the club’s money. Bruce barely had a say in the signing.

And this would show during the opening months of this Premier League season. Under pressure from the word go, Bruce couldn’t buy a piece of luck and even though his officer class, John O’Shea, Lee Cattermole and Wes Brown, went to the manager’s office and pleaded with him to start McClean, Bruce didn’t have the nerve.

Too much was at stake, his job for a start, and even though he liked McClean enough to resist offers from Sheffield Wednesday and Millwall to take him on loan, he stayed conservative with his team selections until, in the end, those players he invested so much faith in had lost their trust in him.

Enter O’Neill. “I didn’t know anything about him,” said the Ulsterman, “so I went to see him at Eppleton for a reserve game against Manchester United and all of a sudden there was this hungry kid, bursting a gut on a night when there were 70mph winds ruining the game.

“He was just so game. The first time he got the ball, he went at his man and beat him. I thought, you know, this guy could give us a spark.

“So I put him on against Manchester City and what does he do? He takes on his man again. What would have happened if the full-back had put the block on him? Would he have lost his confidence? I don’t think he would have done. He is just one of those lads who likes to get at them. And the best thing is I think he can improve. I don’t have him in the team at the minute because he is from the same part of the world as me. If that was the case I would have my brother in, who is two years younger than me and still wants to play. James is in the team because he has been brilliant. His fitness levels are incredible.”

Ordinarily – when a player steps up two or three levels – fitness is the one thing they lack. Not McClean. “What really set him apart,” said the man who gave him his break at Derry City, Stephen Kenny, “was his tremendous capacity for hard work. He made himself a better player because he just had this huge commitment to improve his game on the training ground, as well as work hard in the gym.

“Last year he even brought in his own personal trainer, which I had certainly never seen before in a boy of his age, but we noticed the benefits almost immediately. He was a joy to work with because he just wanted to work, train and play hard. He was one of those players who had no qualms about getting out on the training ground and practising on his own after normal training sessions and doing extra work, or going down the gym on his own.”

It wasn’t just the gym he went to. One day, when Derry’s reserves were travelling to Drogheda, McClean arrived just as the bus was pulling out of the car park and got on board because he wanted to watch a game.

All along, though, he thought he’d missed the bus – both with club and country. Uncapped for years at underage level, he eventually got a chance with Northern Ireland, essentially because he didn’t think the Republic would want him. Now they do and have written to FIFA to set in motion the process of change.

“James has his mind made up and won’t go back to the North whether it’s a Catholic like Michael O’Neill, a Protestant, a Jew or a Muslim in charge,” said a friend of McClean’s. “He is his own man. He’s prepared to take tough decisions.”

Ask Chris Sutton and Fry about that. Both men thought they had the man signed. In fact, Sutton – then manager of Lincoln City – DID sign him but by the time McClean returned home, he had changed his mind and managed to rip up his contract and sign a new one with Derry City instead.

That was 18 months ago, a time when no one knew nor rated him. Even a season at the comparatively poor standard of the League of Ireland First Division failed to impress anyone. Back then all the chat was about Patrick McEleney, another of the Derry alumni.

But all the while the strengthening that came with McClean’s work on his upper body led to a dramatically improved performance in his rookie League of Ireland Premier Division season. Determined, skilful and focussed on beating his man, he carried Derry through the opening half of the year, putting them into a title winning position.

Then Sunderland called and Derry’s slide began. They’ve regretted losing him ever since. His new employers are only now realising how lucky they are.

On another note, if Cattermole gets booked against WBA next weekend then he's suspended for the Mags game. There's not a hope in hell I'd play him to be honest, we badly need him for that game. He's been a new man under O'Neill and one of our best players over the last few months. Stick Meyler in for WBA, and we have Vaughan and Bendtner probably available again too so plenty of options if we decided to stick with 4-5-1 or go 4-4-2.

One thing a lot of people don't mention is that this run that O'Neill has us on has been without a number of first team players at different times, Mignolet/Westwood have been in and out, Brown out, Kilgallon was superb before injury, Vaughan out, Catts out, Bendtner out. Amazing really.

To be honest I think we're only maybe 2 or 3 decent signings away from challenging for the top 7 next season. I say this through gritted teeth but credit to the Mags this year, but there's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be aiming to emulate their current season next year.

You have the top 6 in whatever order, then there's only Newcastle and Everton that I'd be really worried about to be honest. Villa have regressed beyond belief in the space of a year and Stoke have finally been found out. Fulham look dangerous one week and awful the next - too inconsistent. There's not a hope Swansea and Norwich will do as well next year, it just doesn't happen.

Finishing ''best of the rest'' in that 7th place is a very achievable aim next year!

[G.K.]

Norwich cannot be discounted imo. Right signings in the summer and they'll be there again.

[Paully D]

Everton away in the QF.

We haven't won there since 1996 or beaten Everton since 2001.

Oh well, it was a good run.

[Paully D]

Hearing that the Stadium of Light will be renamed the ''Invest in Africa Stadium'' in return for a huge sponsorship deal which Quinn has been working on in Ghana as part of his final project with the club before stepping down today.

[That_Guy]

Originally Posted by Paully D

Hearing that the Stadium of Light will be renamed the ''Invest in Africa Stadium'' in return for a huge sponsorship deal which Quinn has been working on in Ghana as part of his final project with the club before stepping down today.

Still better than the Sports Direct Arena.

*shudders*

[Paully D]

Lots of talk going around that Richardson will be off in the summer. He's recently had a kid and wants to move further south.

Disappointing if true, I actually think he's one of the best LB's in the league and I can't remember the last time a winger got the better of him. He and McClean have a great partnership going on down that side of the field.

Apparently he wanted out in January but compromised with O'Neill that he'd be allowed to leave in the summer if a move he fancied became available at the right price.

Hopefully the run we've been on since O'Neill has taken over will give him something to think about, but he could already have his mind made up.

I'd be tempted to just hold him to the last year of his deal and lose him for nowt next summer rather than take the maximum of around £3m that we'd get for him (last year of deal) this year.

He's also our longest serving player in the squad (5 years) alongside Gordon, meaning we could lose the only 2 players remaining from the Roy Keane era! Doesn't mean a whole lot, but it's nice to have players in the squad who know how hard they had to work to get where we are now and it rubs off on others.

Fingers crossed no-one down south will match his wage! I'd be gutted to lose him to say West Ham, Fulham, QPR etc.