There is a 70% chance that this report will be 30% accurate. Bury report

The traffic on the M1 and M6 was much lighter than I’d anticipated and we parked up in Bury at about quarter to five. Bury is particularly well endowed with canny pubs close to the ground so being the discerning types we are we went into the first one and settled into a corner. My son got the cards out and the four of us had a few games of Black Jack (or rather a bastardised version of the game that we seem to have developed). I like a game of cards in the pub. I rarely seemed to get dealt a good hand (but doesn’t everyone think that?) but each time I played the cards as best as I could and so enjoyed it.

While we were sitting in the pub the news came through that Kevin Phillips had opted for West Brom rather than us. At a footballing level the fact that we weren’t getting a 33 year old Aston Villa reserve with a patchy at best record over the last 5 seasons was not earth shattering. But the loss of Phillips’ talismanic qualities for SAFC supporters was deeply disappointing. The one (extremely minor) plus is at least it might put to rest the arguments by those who seek to excuse Phillips’ poor last two seasons (and questionable commitment) with us as Quinny’s age started to show. Rather than being in the Clough/Hurley/Rowell/Quinn bracket of SAFC hero he can now safely be put in the same bracket as players like Lee Clark and Allan Johnston – players who were great on the pitch for us but whose leaving was rather unfortunate (all be it Phillips was rather more protracted than those two – mind you, when playing with a fit Quinny he was also a much better player than those two).

So we entered the ground in something of a downbeat mood. Bury might be bottom of the bottom league and have no points but complacency was not going to be our downfall, such is our current position. There were I guess about 1,300 SAFC supporters there. Our away support never fails to amaze me. I doubt if more than a couple of clubs will bring those numbers to the SoL for Championship games never mind mid-week first round League Cup matches.

The only change to the starting line-up was Arnau coming in for Stead – with Elliott moving up front. I am not sure which of the midfielders was intended to go onto the right wing as before we had a chance to work out the intended formation Arnau was sent off. Nobody around us knew what for. Someone got a message that it had been for “foul language” (sort of made sense for someone speaking in a second language – we all know from the World Cup how expressions like “your mother is a terrorist whore” can be misunderstood). In fact it was for “an elbow”. Ho-hum.

We went 3-4-2 and actually, if you ignore the fact that we were playing the bottom of the league club (a fairly large fact I’ll grant you) we didn’t play that badly. Elliott ran around and tried to get stuck into things – but had little or no end product. Whitehead was a big improvement on Saturday and looked more like a captain. In the second half in particular when we were playing towards the end where we were sitting we seemed to be battering them – but rarely (if ever) made the goalkeeper work. Does that make sense? Even as I type it I can’t understand how that can be – but it is undoubtedly the impression I got.

Late on in the game Bury got a corner over on the right and an excellent ball was whipped in and headed on (apparently someone in the centre finally knocked it over the line). Good corner as it was it was depressing that we’d conceded from one. If you’re down to ten men but going for the game there is always a risk you’ll be punished on the break – but a one man deficiency should not affect our ability to defend a corner. Just before the end they got another (this time on a break). Somewhere amongst that they got a man sent off as well I understand – but I certainly didn’t realise it at the time.

The SAFC supporters had been reasonably supportive up to the first goal but it acted as the prompt for more anti-team singing. At Southend the “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” song was an understandable and spontaneous outburst of frustration. If we are now going to trot it out as soon as we concede, what are we doing to ourselves? The players we want shot of will move on to other clubs and will not care two hoots what we think of their deservedness to wear one shirt or another. Those players who will stay (and who could do a job for us) will have their confidence ground into the dirt. Yes, we are annoyed about where things are. But when we sing “We are Sunderland” we don’t mean the eleven individuals on the pitch, we mean something much, much bigger. We genuinely mean “us” – our friends, our families, the thousands who went to Roker Park, the thousands who come to the SoL, the thousands who would come to the SoL if there were something even remotely entertaining there. The individuals on the pitch are just the hand we’ve been dealt with for the moment. We can either play it as best we can until a better hand comes along – or destroy it. But if you choose the latter, don’t think there is any rule that says that once destroyed something better will inevitably arise in its place.

In the car on the way back down we got the “Black Cats Text” with the quote from Quinny “I would hope by Monday I can say 70-30 that we will have a world-class manager in place.” Initially this seemed to make sense but the night’s events had induced delirium and we broke down in a fit of giggles. Was he saying he was 70% confident that on Monday he’d think we’d have a 30% chance of getting a manager? Was he merely hoping that on Monday he’d have a 70% chance of getting a manager?

Poor Quinny, a man who certainly did “deserve” to wear the shirt. Whether the shirt deserved to be worn by Quinny is not yet certain. Personally I hope Quinny gets Curbishley to take the job and then he can go back to doing what he signed up for – the Chairman role. Even if he does this it is going to be a long unpleasant season.