FM13: Sunderland AFC - But I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more.

[Jordanknox]

Well i started a save with Sunderland on the first day that the beta became available. I like my teams to play very wide and due to the crossing bug i was amazingly succesful, finishing 2nd in the first season. In the summer i built on this spending the champions league money on plenty of top quality players and getting rid of the deadwood. As the crossing bug is no longer as bad i am expecting things to level out and ill be happy with a top 6 finish.

My team:

Gk: Simon Mignolet

RB: Kyle Naughton

LB: Tsepo Masilela

CB: Ryan Shawcross

CB: Alvaro Dominguez

CM: Radja Nainngolan

CM: Moussa Sissoko

AMR: Theo Walcott

AML: Adam Johnson

AMC: Adam Maher

ST: Stephen Fletcher

Subs:

John O'Shea

Carlos Cuellar

Andrea Poli

Andrei Arshavin (Loan)

Ademilson

Stephane Sessegnon

I also have Jetro Willems coming in on a free in the summer so that should improve the defence for years to come

[twentythree]

4th with 8 games left but there are a couple of teams with games in hand so getting a European place won't be easy.

2 kids played in a trial game for the u18s and less than a week later made their debuts against Reading. Brian Wright became the club's youngest ever player, Premier League's youngest ever player and the youngest ever goalscorer too, notching the first in a 3-2 win. Despite him grabbing the headlines the real hype amongst Sunderland coaches is for Daniel Crutford who played the full 90 minutes in midfield. Technically gifted, playing for his hometown club and rated as five star potential. He's going to get as much game time as possible.

[Mackus]

Not had to the chance to play but something popped up when I was thinking - Has takeover bids become extremely rare this years FM?

[Jordanknox]

I eventually finished 2nd in the Premier League for the 2nd season in succession and ive made a few very good moves in this transfer window IMO. Ive managed to bring in 49m in sales including Sessegnon (13.5m), Fletcher (12.5m), Masilela (7.5m), Wickham (5m) and Naughton (6.5m). Ive brought in Greizman (20m), Giroud (7m), Fabio (5.5m) and Gary Cahill (5m). There is still 35m left in the transfer kitty so i can really push on if the right player becomes available.

[twentythree]

Finished 9th in first season, faded a little at the end due to O' Shea doing his cruciate and putting youngsters in. Was hoping it would lower board expectations for next year but they want top half which might be hard with an aging defence.

Will get a cheap free transfer keeper in, hopefully Gomes but Brad Jones will do if there's any faffing on with work permits or wages, to cover Mignolet because Westwood is kicking off so has to go. Will also see if anyone wants Campbell (wishing I hadn't given him and Bramble new contracts so soon) and as Gardner and Colback are decent at fullback we'll stick with what we've got there, making a central defender who is ready for the first team our transfer priority.

[twentythree]

Got my main transfer targets on deadline day with loan moves for Kolo Toure and Ross Turnbull. Getting one or two to go the other way didn't go to plan, giving Campbell a new contract has turned out to be an even worse decision than I thought. Only Birmingham made an offer, which barely covered his loyalty bonus so was effectively nothing and he came back asking for 20k a week for 4 years to move. So now he's in the reserves. No-one wanted Westwood, even on loan, he's decided to go on a bosman so we're stuck with his unhappy mug until next Summer. I say we but it might be someone else's problem by then...

Just got booed off after a 1-0 home loss to Stoke kept us 18th with just 5 points from 9 games, 3 of which taken from newly promoted Brighton who were beating us at the SoL before a 2nd half collapse. Cattermole just picked up a 3 game ban, joining Vaughan who's currently serving his second violent conduct stretch already.

The same team playing with the same tactics that got us comfortably into the top half last season have lost it completely, can only hope the return of O'Shea from his long injury lay-off spurs us on to get points from Norwich and Wigan otherwise we go into a tricky December schedule that will probably see me get the heave-ho.

[Jordanknox]

From previous experience and from looking at the squad my plan was to sell pretty much every existing player at the earliest opportunity. The only players i kept beyond the first season were Sessegnon, Fletcher, Johnson, O'Shea and Mignolet. Im mid-way through my 3rd season and ive just got rid of the last actual Sunderland player (Sold Johnson for 15m). Its definitely the way forward and the easiest path to success.

[twentythree]

Well I've shambled along into February in 16th place, where we've been all through the Christmas period. Just can't string the 2 wins together to pop us up into mid-table. A club came in for Larsson in January so he's gone and Cuellar rejected an offer to return to Spain. It's a pretty thin squad to start with so my line up is very predictable now, good thing there are hardly any injuries.

Out of the cup and internationals are happening so we go from 8th Feb to 8th March without a game. The players are effectively doing pre-season again with high intensity fitness work scheduled, hopefully it will whip them into shape.

[twentythree]

...and we didn't win for a few more games resulting in the axe falling after Man City rolled into town and put 5 past us. Ah well. We'd actually scored as many as 3rd place Spurs but at the other end our defence was an absolute joke all season, pairing Kolo Toure and John O'Shea looked a lot better in theory than it turned out to be.

[Jordanknox]

Unlucky mate, you starting again or just adding a new manager?

I guess i was lucky that i played my first season with the crossing bug which suited my tactics down to the ground. Finishing 2nd allowed me to completely re-build the side to what i have now.

Im now top of the league in November (Played 12, won 11) and we look really strong. Ive went big on youth in the last 18 months and its really starting to pay off, some of them are some of the best ive seen and i will certainly build the team around them in the future.

[twentythree]

Adding a new manager doesn't feel right. So start again, not make the same mistakes and edit Ellis Short so his patience is 20! I wish there was a no sacking mode on the full game, so you could actually have a bad season and recover from it instead of being pretty much doomed if you don't do as well as the previous season.

Have you got any decent regens? Was looking forward to seeing my 5 star midfielder on that game, he played 10 games for us at age 15 and was a first team regular on loan in league 1 when I got the bullet.

[Jordanknox]

I have some amazing regens, 2 of them are probably the best ive ever had on any FM. However, they were bought in at 16, ive not had a single player through that would even be a squad player so thats quite disappointing.

[kccircle]

Wasn't sure whether this was relevant in here - but playing as Hull City I signed Dong - he is literally a beast in front of goal

[LiamoW21]

I eventually started this week seeing as I have some free time for a change. So far, so good I think. I decided to set opening budgets off seeing as I wouldn't spend anything anyway, just to even the field so to speak. I've been playing 4-4-2 and the occasional 4-4-1-1, rotating quite a bit but I think this is my favoured side:

Mignolet

Cuellar O'Shea Brown Kilgallon

Sessegnon Larrson Cattermole Johnson

Fletcher Campbell

When I play 4-4-1-1, Fletch plays up front with Sess behind him. Kilgallon I threw in because I didn't know what to do about left back and he's been in the side since. He's been shown up against pacey wingers (particularly Lennon at Spurs), but he's looked pretty solid so far. Campbell's been the real star, he's got 10 in the league so far. I had a row with Cattermole early in the season after he got sent off for 2 yellow cards within half an hour. I fined him a week's wages, and he felt it was unfair and started skipped training, so I fined him again and had a word which went well and he seems alright about it now. I'm hoping it stays like that, but if not, I'll sell him. At the moment, I'm in 6th but have games coming up against Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool.

Meanwhile, I seem to be losing a lot of money each month. I think last month was around £3mil. Any ideas on how to turn it around?

[pedromanuelpinto]

Hello,

Thinking to put a 4-2-3-1 (Standard Strategy) and a 4-4-1-1 (away with Counter Attack) rotation in Sunderland.

But with just one FWRD what should I put the role with Fletcher?

In the 4-2-3-1 with 2 DM or 2 CM (or mixed)?

Direct football?

[Mackus]

I eventually started this week seeing as I have some free time for a change. So far, so good I think. I decided to set opening budgets off seeing as I wouldn't spend anything anyway, just to even the field so to speak. I've been playing 4-4-2 and the occasional 4-4-1-1, rotating quite a bit but I think this is my favoured side:

Mignolet

Cuellar O'Shea Brown Kilgallon

Sessegnon Larrson Cattermole Johnson

Fletcher Campbell

When I play 4-4-1-1, Fletch plays up front with Sess behind him. Kilgallon I threw in because I didn't know what to do about left back and he's been in the side since. He's been shown up against pacey wingers (particularly Lennon at Spurs), but he's looked pretty solid so far. Campbell's been the real star, he's got 10 in the league so far. I had a row with Cattermole early in the season after he got sent off for 2 yellow cards within half an hour. I fined him a week's wages, and he felt it was unfair and started skipped training, so I fined him again and had a word which went well and he seems alright about it now. I'm hoping it stays like that, but if not, I'll sell him. At the moment, I'm in 6th but have games coming up against Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool.

Meanwhile, I seem to be losing a lot of money each month. I think last month was around £3mil. Any ideas on how to turn it around?

The board tell you it's expected and it's a non-issue really. Short will invest extra cash to buy a player if you ask him to take over the transfer but with the new £55million TV rights from the 13/14 season losing £3 million a month for 9 months is a club making a profit long term.

[highlander]

Finally started up a save with them earlier managed to bring in a few new faces to sure up the defence and an alternative attacking but same as everyone else leaking goals

1st game beat Wigan 2-0 only to be gubbed 4-0 by Swansea then I go beat man u 3-0 but then lose 4-3 to west Ham I was 4-0 down so dnt seem so bad then came a 7-4 drubbing by qpr again 6-0 down my tactics just don't seem to be gelling in the progress bit and dunno why at all they are stuck at awkward any ideas

[twentythree]

January deadline day in first season and Chelsea have just bid £11.25m for Colback

[MichaelBrown]

Bloodbath at St James' Park

Casualties - Both keepers' pride and 1 bruised Alan Pardew

Imagine that in RL, with a few dirty challenges as well. Best game of football ever.

[twentythree]

Just finished season 1 in my second go. We weren't up to much in the league, finishing with 39 points and scoring only 38 times. Luckily the three promoted sides were all hopeless so we stayed out of the drop zone all year and finished 16th.

We got to the FA Cup semi final after an admittedly very easy run of opponents. Whitehead put Stoke in front, we equalised then Palacios was sent off after 60 minutes. Cue extra time and penalt.... wait, no, Stoke have won it. A Wes Brown og with seconds remaining

[twentythree]

That second season thing is happening again.

Newcastle (a) 0-1

Watford (h) 4-4

Oldham (h) 0-1

Huddersfield (a) 2-3

So 4 games in we've lost to our rivals, gone out of the cup to a League 1 team and taken 1 measly point from 2 newly promoted teams.

The only highlight so far has been Nyron scoring for Watford then, being Nyron, getting robbed on the edge of his own box under no pressure when they were 4-1 up to let us back in the game.

[Jordanknox]

Im doing really well at the moment, im in January 2017 and running away with the Premier League title (which we won last season). The team is absolutely fantastic on paper and the young players coming through are outstanding.

GK: ter Stegen

Defence: Fabio, Phil Jones, Jetro Willems, Ryan Shawcross, Alvaro Dominguez, Antonio De Zan (Regen)

Midfield: Yann M'Vila, Radja Nainngolan, Miguel Javier (Regen), Adam Maher, Antione Griezmann, Georginho Wijnaldum, Theo Walcott, Yavuz Gunay (Regen)

Attack: Ademilson, Angelo (Regen), Hugo Ortiz (Regen)

Here are two of my best regens:

This lad is an absolute beast, hes surely going to be one of the best centre halfs of all time

Same with Gunay, hes got pretty much everything for an attacking midfielder and he could even play further forward when he gets older

[twentythree]

Spent most of season 2 teetering above the drop zone, got about 6 games left. A good run of 6 wins and a draw from 8 games over Christmas propelled us miles clear of the bottom 3 so we wont be going down but we've trailed off again into 16th.

At least Westwood, Saha and Cuellar are leaving so new faces will be needed in the Summer, the only player I've signed so far is a 16 year old regen for buttons.

[AcidBurn]

January deadline day in first season and Chelsea have just bid £11.25m for Colback

Obviously I'm a few days late, I take it you accepted?

[twentythree]

Obviously I'm a few days late, I take it you accepted?

Of course but it was the night the update came out and it crashed just afterwards. So when it happened again I took it as a sign and kept him! There were a few £6m bids in the Summer and with him only having a year left I've had to tie him down on 35k a week. He hasn't even improved that much, he's just average at everything and there have been a couple of agents touting free transfers that look better than him.

The only other bids I've had in 2 seasons was for Adam Reed who went to Brentford for £7k and Cuellar who's signed a contract to join Athletico Madrid after his agent made ridiculous demands to stay here.

[twentythree]

Despite beating Villa to only stay up on the last day which was our only result in the final six games uncle Ellis handed me a £13m warchest. Without warning the transfer window opened and Stoke layed another £13m on the table for Adam Johnson. So we 'cooly' negotiated for a 15% future fee and 'grudgingly' accepted.

It's only July 1st and the situation is:

Out- Westwood, Saha, Cuellar, Ji (due to no work permit), Noble, Johnson

In

-a 20 year old unattached French regen keeper to replace Westwood

-Kassim Abdallah on loan from Marseille

-Javi Garcia on loan from Man City

-Vadim Demidov from Frankfurt for £6m

-Dzmitry Verkhovtsov will join in December when his contract in Russia expires

Also

-a regen striker who debuted for USA in the World Cup aged 17 is awaiting a work permit for a £250k move from New York

-Viktor Claessen's £10m deal from Valenciennes is practically done but they've just been relegated and he's unhappy so I'm tempted to play some games to try to get him cheaper. I nearly always end up with egg on my face when I do this but the deal looks steeper every time I look at it, the club only have £17m available cash right now.

Those signings have put me in a position where I can safely cash in on Cash... sorry, Colback now to fund primarily a left sided defender and possibly another attacker if the right one is out there.

[Jordanknox]

I would have kept Johnson mate, you will be hard pressed to replace him for less than 13m. He was fantastic for me for 2 or 3 seasons before i cashed in for 15m to Norwich. Id say its best to sell every other Sunderland player, the squad just isnt good enough in-game and need to be replaced ASAP.

[twentythree]

I would have kept Johnson mate, you will be hard pressed to replace him for less than 13m. He was fantastic for me for 2 or 3 seasons before i cashed in for 15m to Norwich. Id say its best to sell every other Sunderland player, the squad just isnt good enough in-game and need to be replaced ASAP.

I agree with your second point, I always try to go as far as possible with the initial squad but after 2 seasons they are shot to bits, all the defenders are totally finished. So Johnson, who wasn't really doing it for me anyway, had to go to fund a complete overhaul.

None of the left backs I wanted materialised (get Luis Gustavo and retrain him there was top choice) so Andre Santos is in on loan and £5.5m Ashley Williams completes the new back four. Free transfer Jermaine Jones adds bite in midfield with more loanees Yoric Ravet and Jonathan Riera the widemen there to create. A couple of regen have joined who will hopefully replace Johnson in the long term.

After a really strong pre season campaign 7 new players started our first game of season 3 and with the help of a reworked 4-4-2 we beat Everton at Goodison 2-0. The only ones left are Mig, Larsson (for his set pieces) and Fletcher/Sess as a proper front two, none of that AMC nonsense any more.

[Jordanknox]

My first signing when i took over was Tsepo Masilela for LB, a couple of seasons in I managed to sign Jetro Willems on a free transfer and Fabio for 5m. Im in 2017 and just sold Willems for 30m. Also just sold Walcott for 30m to Spurs and Shawcross for 20m so im rolling in money atm, especially after the Champions League win.

[twentythree]

Thanks, Im giving Masilela a closer look for January. At 29 and 350k he might be the stop gap I need, given 7 of my first teamers are loanees this year and I cant afford all of them. Willems is valued at £5m so will be hard for me to get, there's a Brazilian regen I'd prefer instead if I was going to splash that sort of money out.

I've got plenty of dough now too, deadline day saw Kilgallon (600k), Bramble (free) and McClean (£3.5m) out of the door and the Darren Bent internationals clause was a nice £1.5m suprise. We've had a steady start in the league. Demidov and Williams have been immense and once my free transfer centre back from Russia arrives and I don't have to use cart horse O'Shea as back up that problem looks sorted for at least 2 years.

[Jordanknox]

Other players i found useful at the start were Jermaine Jenas and Kyle Naughton. I managed to sell McClean for 7.5m to Celtic in the 2nd season but he was a very important part of the team due to the crossing bug. I sold Bramble and Kilgallon for 2m at the start but i had to release O'Shea in season 2 as he had no takers. I got really good fees for a few real Sunderland players, Sess-13.5m (3rd season), Fletcher- 12.5m (3rd season), Johnson- 15m (3rd season) which provides money to bring in better and younger players.

[twentythree]

Masilela has got injured in December which has scuppered a move for him for now. I'll be looking at free transfers and saving up every penny to hopefully nab one or two of the regens my scouts have found. We have 26 points from 20 games which is enough to see us into 9th but below us the league is very, very tight right down to 20th and a bad couple of weeks for anyone puts them into the scrap.

The new formation I tried has solved our defensive issues whilst reiging in the forwards so our games are very tight now and every goal is vital. We are lucky that Connor Wickham has started to show his potential, grabbing 7 from 12 as a target man after Fletcher only managed 1 in his run of games. It hasn't helped having no less than 3 games this season where a dubious penalty decision has cost us, my heart sinks every time I see Howard Webb on the fixture list.

[LiamoW21]

I've not had much chance to play recently, but I've managed a few sessions over the past few days. As I expected, I lost momentum after back to back games to City and Liverpool, sending us on a 4 game losing streak. Heading into the Tyne-Wear Derby, we'd slumped to 14th and I wasn't looking forward to it (I hate losing to Newcastle on FM, whether I'm Sunderland or not). However, we won 2-1 thanks to an own goal from Coloccini seconds after Ranger cancelled out Campbell's opener. From there, we've kicked on a bit and drew 1-1 with Chelsea at home and beaten Stoke away 4-1, with Campbell scoring all but one of those goals. He's on 15 goals for the season now, and seems to be the only player who can score (joint second in the scoring charts are Johnson and Fletcher with 2 each). Worrying...

[twentythree]

Hate it too. Carrying on our real life tradition, my record in my current save against them is p6 w0 d2 l4. Fletcher hasn't scored many for me either and has been well and truly surpassed by Wickham as my first choice target man now. With Fletcher in his last year of his contract and a couple of regens knocking on the door he could be on his way out soon.

Finished 12th in season 3 in a pretty uneventful year. Preseason has been difficult, 3 of the 7 loans players from last year signed again (Javi Garcia on much lower wages this time) but the squad has become even thinner. The wage bill has crashed from 3.6 to 2.5m per month after Campbell was sold and big earners O'Shea, Brown, Vaughan and Sessegnon left on frees. The only 2 transfer targets who I've been able to get were a couple of Brazilian regens to fill the left back and left wing void, giving me with 21 senior players to choose from this season and a reserve team consisting of 3rd choice keeper Jordan Pickford and 4 centre backs.

Special agent Adam Johnson helped get Stoke got relegated and he quickly abadoned the sinking ship meaning we picked up a cool £1.5m sell on clause after just a year, plus Stoke are still paying instalments for him They are probably gone from the top flight for good, after rebuilding their entire team they'll still relying on an aging David Bentley to supply a badly aging Kenwynne Jones in the Championship.

[twentythree]

Just got back to this, played 7 won 2 draw 4 lost 1 in the league so far and out of the cup. Fletcher is back in the goals along with Wickham and Demidov is getting crazy high ratings. Ive completely overhauled the coaching staff from the original mob to the best around right now. Parnaby from Boro to head the youth setup, Kolo Toure as u18 manager plus Brett Emerton and David Trezeguet who are future stars in the coaching bracket.

Only trouble now is the weak backup, have to hope there are no serious injuries or this lot come into play:

An ok regen keeper

Bardsley

Verkovstov (only quality player on this list)

Gardner

Colback

Elmo

Rodney Strasser (always injured)

Cattermole

2 regen strikers with lots of promise but who cant handle an extended run

[twentythree]

Finished 6th in season 4. Since signing Ashley Williams he has started every league game for 2 seasons and this season Mig picked up the golden glove with 18 clean sheets. Williams is 31 now so hopefully he has another couple of years in him. Fletcher got injured when he was on a fine run of 11 goals so Wickham ended up top scorer with 16 in the league.

Have parted with £9m for as new right sided regen player and I have another £17m to go which I intend to spend on our European campaign. The extra games will mean new 1 year contract offers for Fletcher, Larsson and Bardsley depending on how much they want paying and I still have 3 loanees going home to think about replacing.

The team of year bonus clause that I've been using to help keep my record of not paying any agent a single penny so far backfired when Mig and Demidov got picked and took £1.2m out of our coffers.

[LiamoW21]

That's season one over. Finished a very respectable 8th in the end, so I'm happy enough. Also, the Scum got relegated. Shame, that. I eventually abandoned the 4-4-2 and went with a 4-2-3-1 with two defence midfielders (one a defence midfielder, one a deep lying playmaker, both set to 'Defend') and gave the AMC (Sess) a fair bit of creativity, letting him wander onto the wings, etc. and it seemed to do the business. Campbell finished joint top scorer in the league with 23 goals, Fletch finished with 9, Wickham with 5 (all in two FA Cup games), then AJ and Cuellar got two each, then there's a few with 1 goal including Sess and Ji. I've got no idea how much money I'm going to get to spend, but I'd like to bring in a new RB, LB, DC and DM/CM, with a new backup goalie a possibility after Westwood had a good cry about sitting on the bench.

[Mackus]

Just got back playing downloading the updates as I type this - Question for the people who have progressed in their saves; How is the club financially aslong you're not trigger happy spending in years 2 and 3 etc.

[twentythree]

The finances have been fine for me. Finished in the bottom half first three seasons and they always gave me money to spend then when I finished 6th they gave me £17m. I think keeping wages down is your main concern, once the big earners like Brown and O'Shea leave you get plenty of leeway provided you haven't stocked up on crippling future payments and bonuses.

[Jordanknox]

I spent massively in the first few years but i was successful so i never encountrered any financial issues, spending big is a gamble but if youre successful then its worth it.

[LiamoW21]

I only got £4.6mil to spend second season after that 8th place finish. Completely put me off the game after having nothing to spend first season either.

[Mackus]

The finances have been fine for me. Finished in the bottom half first three seasons and they always gave me money to spend then when I finished 6th they gave me £17m. I think keeping wages down is your main concern, once the big earners like Brown and O'Shea leave you get plenty of leeway provided you haven't stocked up on crippling future payments and bonuses.

Noticed Fletcher is a huge downfall to bonuses, something like 5 million after 20 goals and 5 million to Wolves after 25 games, what a ripoff

3 games to go for me, it's an uneventful mid-table finish - Priorities in the market is a midfield reshape, no point in buying another Striker as Wickham's PA seems to be as good as the scouts make it as reading people's saves

[twentythree]

Those Fletcher clauses are getting removed for the next update- O'Neill said the fee was straight £12m and not £12m+. Wickham's turned out very good for me but it took him 3 seasons to get there. Some other people have managed to get Ji and Campbell to score a few so it might be worth keeping one. If you're giving Campbell a new deal try to leave it as late as possible so his agent doesn't have your eyes out.

[twentythree]

Season 5 got off to an awful start, our hard work to achieve a sixth place finish was in vain as Aberdeen beat us 1-0 then lost 2-1 at our place to put us out of the European qualifiers on away goals. Aberdeen have a handy side featuring some Scottish stalwarts such as Charlie Adam, Kenny Miller and Alan Hutton and as well as that I think my formation hasn't worked as well since the update and I need to find a way to attack more.

Things have started better in the league, 'big' Connor Wickham has headed the winner in both the games at home to Stoke (who came straight back up*) and away at Wigan but the overall performances still suggest a new strategy is needed.

Not much point mentioning transfer business now, all my signings apart from Garcia on loan and Strasser from AC Milan are young regens and my scouts are in overdrive trying to find the next big thing. Still happy that I've managed to retain some of the original players:

Mig is undisputed first team keeper, Pickford is still at the club as the 3rd choice- always on loan figure

Bardsley, Colback, Larsson, Elmo and Gardner are back-up

Cattermole is still club captain and has a squad rotation role

Wickham and Fletcher lead the line (although Fletcher has another bad injury and is starting to decline so might not get back in as first choice any more).

*Jonno also got Southampton relegated and managed to jump ship to Chelsea where he is back up to Oscar/ Hazard. Taking him to £54m in transfer fees in his career.

Also I have the file to make changes to players stats for the next update at the minute so if you have any thoughts stick them in here and I'll take a look! In terms of making players better mainly looked at Fletcher, Mig and Rose and as I have to be fair a some have gone down a bit too. But I'm always looking out for ideas about any player's strengths and weaknesses, even on the smallest of things and I've updated the favoured personel list based on your suggestions in here.

[Mackus]

I have problems with Wickham, it seems his time away from the club has done him more harm than good and the Scouts no longer rate him as a leading Prem Striker

[twentythree]

Wickham's done it again with a headed winner against Arsenal. He's in the last year of his contract and Villa bid over 11m for him on deadline day (£10m to us once Ipswich got their cut), not one I had to think long about.

A Wickham/ Welbeck front 2 for England would take some stopping, it's a shame they're playing 4-5-1 under Martin Jol, preventing him from adding to his solitary cap so far.

Edit: they just upped it to over £15m, obviously desperate to replace Bent who's 32 now. Told them I'd take that plus Benteke (who they never play) and they've pulled out.

[twentythree]

Jol gave the fans (well, me) what they wanted and England headed by Welbeck and Wickham have blatted Poland, Kazakstan and the Ukraine to get the World Cup qualifiers off to a flier. CW scored in all 3.

Back at Sunderland 4 wins in the opening 4 games then a decent draw at Swansea have just been unravelled by a 5-4 horror show at Championship Blackburn to go out of the League Cup in the first game again followed by a 6-1 mauling at Old Trafford. Still, we're in a comfortable position where the aim of another top half finish is looking achievable. Especially if we keep up the Steve Bruce approach to cup competitions.

[twentythree]

Another season and a 2nd consecutive 6th place finish. We couldn't hang with the big boys who pulled well clear in the end but we never had to look over our shoulders. Wickham scored 19 in a fine season, he also moved onto 6 England goals from his 9 caps to date.

That means another European qualifying adventure to sunny Scotland again. This time Rangers couldn't live with our newest free transfer signing Lacina Traore and take a 3-0 first leg lead up north. Our fantastic league start of last year hasn't been repeated though, we have lost our opening games to Forest and Norwich.

Summer saw the departure of Bardsley and Elmo who wanted new challenges, Gardner wants to leave but wouldn't drop a division to go to Cardiff. Which leaves him, Mig, Larsson, Colback, Cattermole (back in the team now that Javi Garcia has finally gone for good) and Fletcher still in the squad.

[twentythree]

It is June 2021. Connor Wickham is a World Cup winner, and Sunderland just lifted the Champions League Trophy. Simon Mignolet who has played every minute of every league game for 7 straight seasons made the crucial save in the final penalty shootout.

Elsewhere after scratching about in Scotland for a bit former youth team player Mikael Mandron has hit the big time and his 13 league goals helped keep Forest in the top flight. Jordan Pickford is back up to Joe Hart at Man City and luckily the one game Hart missed last season was against us allowing us to be 3 past him. The unstoppable Neymar has guided Man Utd to an umpteenth League win and Hartlepool pipped Gateshead in the league 2 playoffs.

Oh and it's been 4-4-2 all the way from Moscow to Milan to Madrid to Munich

[andrewfx]

Anyone tried Sunderland on the new patch yet? Mangane looks like a bit of a beast so far