XHAKA CAN
Correctly installed as lava-hot favourites to be relegated back to the Championship, seconds after the final whistle was blown at the end of their last-gasp playoff final win over Sheffield United, Sunderland promptly lost their standout player, Jobe Bellingham, to a far more successful club who might conceivably win a trophy more prestigious than Fizzy Cup in the next 70 years. Instead of raging about cosy cartels, the unfairness of PSR and the fact their billionaire owner isn’t allowed to spend money on players that the football club he owns hasn’t earned, mackems have since looked on with increasing intrigue as their club’s hierarchy have unveiled a series of new signings that, while unlikely to prompt talk of a serious title tilt, may at least ensure that Sunderland do not feature in any conversational comparisons with Derby County and their record low Premier League points tally of 11 in the coming months.
It’s a near-certainty that Enzo Le Fée, Habib Diarra, Simon Adingra, Chemsdine Talbi, Noah Sadiki and Reinildo Mandava won’t all go on to achieve Hall of Fame status on Wearside. But, in signing the six players, the club have shown they at least intend to make a decent fist of trying to stay up, while also putting the Sunderland ‘Til I Die days of Jack Rodwell on £70,000-per-week in League One, paying £4m for Will Grigg in an ill-advised deadline-day panic buy and that Oxbridge fop in the red trousers sound checking Ibiza anthems over the Stadium of Light PA long behind them. Of course, this being Sunderland, the possibility of sky-high farce and a snake belly low league position can never be discounted and despite these signings, the club’s head coach, Régis Le Bris, looked at risk of embarking on his first ever Premier League campaign with a callow and whey-faced squad boasting little or no top-flight experience.
A grizzled old hand was required. Ideally a handsome, tough-tackling midfield veteran with more than a century of caps. A man whose leadership skills were held in such high regard by his peers that he famously topped the players’ poll for the position of Arsenal captain in 2019 without recourse to a recount. A man so impervious to the slings and brickbats of his once-adoring public that he would go on to … er, lose that captaincy after throwing a strop in the face of fan derision for being substituted against Crystal Palace. A man who realised the Sisyphean futility of trying to win a title at the Emirates and went to Germany to win one instead. And a man who realised he was unlikely to win another one because Leverkusen are now managed by Erik ten Hag. What Sunderland needed was the man, the warrior, the myth and the occasionally contrary red and yellow card-magnet that is Granit Xhaka.
And hell’s bells, if they haven’t gone and got him, in the process landing the kind of transfer coup which suggests that if they are to eventually go down next season, they will at least do so swinging haymakers of both the metaphorical and literal variety. “I’m very proud to be here,” roared the man who finished 16th on last year’s Ballon d’Or list and has signed a three-year deal for a fee of around £20m. “When I spoke to the club, I was excited and I felt the energy and the mentality that all the people and players have. It’s exactly what I wanted and I have a very good feeling.” Having made it clear before his move that he was hell-bent on moving to Sunderland, Xhaka’s arrival has prompted several questions, the most pertinent of which seems to be why exactly he was so hell-bent on going to Sunderland. “We are back to where this club needs to be, and we want to stay here to write our own history,” yodelled the Swiss legend to his adoring public from the central tower of Durham Cathedral. “I feel that I’m ready to help the team with my experience but with quality as well.” And while history is famously written by the winners, there isn’t a mackem alive who won’t be delighted if next season it’s chronicled by the team finishing 17th.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We have done this immediately, following an assessment by engineering specialists who can no longer confirm that the North Stand is safe for spectator use” – after yesterday’s Football Daily, Sheffield city councillor Joe Otten reveals the outlook is even more grim for Wednesday fans after they were been banned from opening Hillsborough’s North Stand to spectators due to safety concerns, with the new season little more than a week away.
Perhaps the reason for Sheffield Wednesday’s 10-man, 16-0 defeat to Halliwell FC in 1887 (yesterday’s Football Daily) was that not all members of the 1896 FA Cup-winning squad were trusting of the Victorian time machine technology that the club were clearly using at that time?” – Garreth Cummins (and others).
Although the number is the same as Football Daily’s pedants, my only knowledge of ‘Bonnie Blue’ is that I thought it was an affectionate name for Cowdenbeath’s home kit. And that’s the story I’m sticking with” – Simon Mazier (and 1,056 others).
Re: Forest’s ownership. Guy Stephenson is partially correct (yesterday’s Football Daily letters); it is the same Evangelos Marinakis who put his shares into a blind trust earlier in the year, but it’s also the Evangelos Marinakis that reversed the situation in June when it became apparent it wasn’t required” – Jim Hearson.
If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … Rollover. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.
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