Some thoughts



Luxury. Ah remember when t'players had to walk 12 miles t'ground in t'afternoon after working a 10 hour shift down t'pit, smoked 20 Woodbine in t'changing room afore t'match, beat Arsenal 10 nil and still had to borrow threehappence for a bag of chips to feed t'bairns.
 
Luxury. Ah remember when t'players had to walk 12 miles t'ground in t'afternoon after working a 10 hour shift down t'pit, smoked 20 Woodbine in t'changing room afore t'match, beat Arsenal 10 nil and still had to borrow threehappence for a bag of chips to feed t'bairns.
Gerrup int middle oftnart afore thid gont bed akip int cardboard box n ad gravel fort bait. Bloody luxury. Kids these days dinnat nar they're born
 
Fans are as much to blame as the clubs. They call for these marquee signings, berate local players, demand foreign managers as domestic ones are not good enough, Oman constantly about the style of football and pay vast sums to Sky.

And they will worship some guy who has no connection just because he scores a few goals and then moan like bitches when he moves on for a better deal
 
Fans are as much to blame as the clubs. They call for these marquee signings, berate local players, demand foreign managers as domestic ones are not good enough, Oman constantly about the style of football and pay vast sums to Sky.

And they will worship some guy who has no connection just because he scores a few goals and then moan like bitches when he moves on for a better deal
Matron!
 
Football has changed. The problem SAFC have is that the club is built on a foundation of absolute twats now.
Football has changed and so has Sunderland. Sadly, just not in the same way.

It’s what I’ve been saying about selling Henderson and Pickford at the first bid. These two could have played for us for a generation. At least some people within the club realise where we have gone wrong. We need new owners to put the theory into practice if we (big if) we get some more good ones through.
I’ve just said on the Henderson thread. If he had stayed with us he would now be at Carlisle. We seem to break young players who show potential and very few seem to kick on to the next level.
 
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When I was 13, I turned up late for training at ascot. I was being scouted and thiught the club was too small for me. They made me do laps. I couldn't be arsed to train that day so they made me train an extra hour doing more laps. Training that week was physically exhausting. Come weekend, I warmed up, got changed and headed to the pitch. Manager picked me up by my hair and shoved a sponge in my hand and walked me to his car. He looked me in the eyes and said "I don't care if you play for Ascot or Real Madrid, if you dont care about the club you play for then you better get used to cleaning cars" and walked away. Safe to say my car alloys are spotless
 
Been to a talk today with Monty and Dick Malone. Just some points I picked up and have been musing.

1) Since the 60’s, Sunderland have never built on success. We’ve had promotions or cup runs, then sold off our best players, failed to replace them, fallen and started again. We need a CEO and back room staff who are committed to achieving and then building further on successes to break this cycle.

2) In the olden days players were paid a basic wage with extra for appearances and performances. The basic wage was enough to get by on but the extras paid for the luxuries. That made players hungry to work and perform as they made more money. These days the basic wage of some players is way more than they need to live on so there is no wage incentive to work hard.

3) Players used to have to work around the club as well as being footballers. When the Northumbria Centre was opened, they’d do their training, then get the rollers out and roll the pitches. Another day they all worked together and laid a footpath. They did DIY jobs around Roker Park painting barriers and stuff. All of that built team spirit and encouraged working together as well as building pride among them for the ground. They’d socialise together and built good friendships. The camaraderie like this doesn’t seem to happen these days which affects team spirit.

4) Boys were not allowed to sign for a club until they were around aged 14. Until then, they played social football in school teams, local leagues etc. Once they signed, they were given jobs and had to work hard for things like new boots and kit. These days academies take on 5-6 year olds and kit them out with everything they need. They don’t have to work hard to achieve things. They miss out on the social football as they are not allowed to play for the school and local leagues. By the time they get to around 15, the big clubs come in and cherry pick the best for their youth set ups. This is why it’s so hard to get decent players coming through academies for clubs such as Sunderland.

Anyway just thought it was interesting the way the culture has changed in the game and thought it offered some insights into the problems that we currently have at the club.

Can you imagine giving someone like Borini a tin of paint and telling him to get cracking? It just wouldn't happen.

That's some time tunnel you've stepped into @becs

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Football has changed and so has Sunderland. Sadly, just not in the same way.


I’ve just said on the Henderson thread. If he had stayed with us he would now be at Carlisle. We seem to break young players who show potential and very few seem to kick on to the next level.
No he wouldn’t, you could tell straight away he was going to be superb. Good first touch, normally a pass, quick, had a trick. Good stamina, the only thing he couldn’t do was tackle.
 
Exactly and we clearly haven't, we currently employ a bunch of third rate fraudsters who are paid a king's ransom whether they perform or not, case closed.
Yes, so recruitment is the problem. Not the fact that footballers are well paid. Case reopened and then closed in my favour ;)
 
I have said for a long time that players should pick up a 'decent' basic wage (something like 1k a week/game would be more than fair imo) then have maybe 10k win bonus
Absolutely. And any agent fees come out of their pocket.

If they want to employ an agent, they pay them.
 
My dad told me a Sunderland player used to deliver pop in Milfield during the season when he was growing up in the 50s.

A player went out to every school every week to chat with and coach the school team.

As a kid, he could get in free if they spent a couple of hours removing the straw off the pitch before kick off.
That was football in the community.

It started sometime in the 80s that the majority of players were not from the same region as the fans.
Now it's not even the same country.

Famously Celtic's European Cup winning team were all born within 30 miles of Glasgow.
Which for me (not Catholic) makes Celtics and Steins achievement the greatest ever in football . Can you imagine the fervour generated by a successful Sunderland team of local lads ? No, of course you can't .
 
Which for me (not Catholic) makes Celtics and Steins achievement the greatest ever in football . Can you imagine the fervour generated by a successful Sunderland team of local lads ? No, of course you can't .
No
I did see them come home with the Cup though.
That's as good as it ever got, as too young to work and buy a Wembley ticket.
 
There are ways and means to motivate people other than money, there are ways to build team spirit and work in the community.

I imagine we have not had anyone bothered enough to take responsibilty to to find said ways, that they were either A) not bothered or B) stuck in how it was when they were young.
 
There was an article awhile back where one of the old players, it may have been Armstrong talked about having to climb up the floodlights to change a globe or clean the lights or something as part of his apprenticeship. Imagine that now man. Little Timmy's agent would be banging on the managers door within half an hour.
 
Our problems appeared to be that the dressing room had more clout than sucessive mangers (wrongly) if rumour and snippets of news that came out are to believed.

This meant any changes that managers attempted were stopped until managers lost the dressing room control and of players.

Once players win a power struggle then as a club you are fucked. Toxicity rules and we see results. Good players want to be away from that atmosphere so the spread of shit carries on unfettered.

Yes there have been bad calls and decisions by Short, but sorting out the players rather than letting infection spread was also one of the biggest mistakes made at the club.

Hopefully we will get a chance to put it right. But after making the same mistakes over the last ten seasons can we change and break the cycle of shit.

I hope so or we will never recover from this ass end of mistakes and will stay at the level shit ends up....e.g the neck of the poor long suffering supporters.
 
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Which for me (not Catholic) makes Celtics and Steins achievement the greatest ever in football . Can you imagine the fervour generated by a successful Sunderland team of local lads ? No, of course you can't .
Ajax had a team that won the European cup where most were born within 15 miles of the ground
 
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