This is a perfect opportunity for the club and most importantly us as fans to reinvigorate the ground and better the predominantly stale atmosphere we have become used to within the Stadium of Light.
I urge our fans to fully get behind this campaign, show your support for creating a large singing area in our ground and in doing so ensure that the Roker Roar does not fade and die.

“Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping… waiting… and though unwanted… unbidden… it will stir… open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us… guides us… passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love… the clarity of hatred… and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we’d know some kind of peace… but we would be hollow… Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we’d be truly dead.”

Let’s keep that passion stirring and create an atmospheric ground to be proud of, as we once were.

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The atmosphere appeared to affect our ex-striker as he fluffed a number of chances and required regular pep-talks (awww bless im!) from his fellow Aston Villa players.

No doubt he’ll be hinting at a move away from Villa park in the not-too-distant future. Who’s left for him now? Arsenal? Stoke?!

On a slightly separate note, it was fitting that Darren Bent’s regular Sunderland chant has been adopted by Connor Wickham. It would be a shame to lose one of our better ones and after his cracking goal yesterday he fully deserves to have a chant of his own.

Don’t forget to join our forum and have a say in future banners and flags. Click here to join the Sunderland Football Group forum.

To the Tune of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”:

Dont worry (der-der-der-der-der)
About a thing (der-der-der-der-der)
We’re Sunlun AFC
We’re gonna be alright

Amazingly the chant received recognition from the media today. The Independent said:

“The lifting of the pressure was palpable. Three big goals in 10 minutes and the Stadium of Delight was rocking to the sound of Three Little Birds. “Don’t worry ’bout a thing,” the home fans chorused, Bob Marley-style.

Don’t worry? After the final whistle, and Franco di Santo’s injury-time consolation goal, Sunderland were up into 10th position with 41 points, seven clear of Wigan, who dropped back to third from bottom. Bruce, however, was simply thanking his overdue turn of fortune”

If you are unable to see the video then click on this link: Stéphane Sessègnon Chant

Supporters everywhere have been salivating at the thought of seeing Sessègnon and Muntari in the famous red and white stripes and that dream is now very much a reality.

The dazzling Stéphane Sessègnon has signed on a three and a half year deal for around £4m and can’t wait to hit the floor running. Sessègnon is a quick, technically gifted, versatile, attacking player who can play anywhere in midfield but he prefers operating on the right hand side. Here is a video to whet your appetite and hopefully a positive sign of things to come from the ex-PSG man:

Sulley Muntari on the other hand is a high energy, committed defensive midfield player. Signed by Inter originally by Mancini, he was a major part of Jose Mourinho’s Serie A and Champions league winning side. Sulley is a tenacious ball winner but also likes to get forward, he is regularly described as a “box to box midfielder”.

Muntari is a proven Premiership player, having already plyed his trade at Portsmouth under then manager Harry Redknapp. He helped bring Pompey silverware, hopefully he can do the same on Wearside. It’s also worth mentioning he’ll be in good company at Sunderland, linking up with fellow Ghanaian team-mates John Mensah and Asamoah Gyan.

Haway the lads!

If you like nothing more than to back the lads to the hilt and chant like your life depended on it then we encourage you to get your FA cup tickets next to us.

We’re encouraging like-minded Sunderland supporters to relocate. Join us for the cup game and help introduce several new chants.

We’re currently located in the last fews rows of the SWC around seats 82-88. Come along and get involved. If you’ve already paid for your ticket elsewhere in the ground and fancy getting in on the action then I’m sure the club would be happy to change your seat.

Feel free to sign-up to the SFG forum if you haven’t already: http://sunderlandfootball.proboards.com/index.cgi

The hammers are on the horizon, and will be travelling with confidence after they cruised past Manchester United on Tuesday evening. It is essential we get back to winning ways and getting behind the team can only help. It was this fixture last year, which produced one of the best atmospheres to grace the Stadium of Light. It can be of no doubt that the home support that day was what rallied the team to come back from two down, and should actually have won the game. Visiting ‘Ammers made comments such as ‘I wish we could get Upton rocking like the Stadium of Light was’ and ‘Did you hear the home crowd? It was a wall of noise the entire second half’. Some argue that crowds make no difference, but this not the case. Hence the term ‘home advantage’. You only have to look at how even an average side can get the better of a good side with the crowd behind them (5-1 is the clue).

Also, coming up is the 3rd round of the FA Cup. Now we know of recent years the competition (according to some) has lost some of its edge. Well, lets make a day of it, get all of us like minded lads to decide on a place in the ground to congregate and lets make a bit of noise. This will be the perfect opportunity to show what we are about and it will be a good platform to get some new songs on the go. People have mentioned being bored of singing the same old songs so lets get the singing culture back with a few new melodies. Lets face it, we pay enough money these days to enter a football stadium, so we might as well make the best of it!

After the thrashing at Sid James park a few weeks ago the Sunderland players and Steve Bruce in particular apologised profusely to the fans and promised to turn things around. It was hard to take on board at the time but after seeing the lads beat Stoke 2-0, draw away at Spurs 1-1 and slaughter Chelsea 3-0 at Stamford bridge today they really have redeemed themselves.

To a man Sunderland were outstanding today.

They turned in a magnificent display, working tirelessly hard to regain possession, outpassing a World Class Chelsea side and creating enough clear cut opportunities to fully deserve a 3-0 victory. It could and probably should have been a lot more.

The first Sunderland goal came from an individual, George Best-esque goal from Nedum Onuoha of all players. Onuoha received the ball around 30 yards out and with very no options open he went on a mazy run, passing four Chelsea players along the way with fantastic close control and a marvellous finish to boot. Madness. One of the best goals you’ll ever see.

Previous to this quite remarkable goal Chelsea should have gone down to ten men after Ivanovic tripped Wellbeck as he ran clear on goal. The referee bottled it and only issued a yellow card. No surprises there.

In the second half Sunderland continued to dominate and deservedly went two nil up after a great passing move resulted in Asamoah Gyan side-footing the ball to the left of the out-stretched Petr Cech and into the back of the net. Pinching all round, it was hard to believe how well we were playing. Two up at Stamford bridge! Epic.

Rather unusually for Sunderland we refused to sit back and attacked at every opportunity. It was tremendous to watch and a welcome change to tactics gone by. We had so many clear cut opportunities it was hard to comprehend how we were only two up.

In the final moments, Ashley Cole made a hash up of a backpass under pressure from Ricco. He passed the ball straight to Wellbeck who punished his rare mistake with a poachers goal and sent the Sunderland fans mad with delight.

The lads were superb, every one of them.

Chelsea 0-3 Sunderland Full time. Emphatic. Amazing. Dreaming?! Haway the lads!

Don’t forget to sign up to the Sunderland Football forum and get involved: http://sunderlandfootball.proboards.com/index.cgi

After an abysmal showing from the lads against the mags last weekend it was important we got back to winning way at home to Stoke City on Saturday. Stoke are always a tough side to break down and they do possess that element of quality to unlock a defence (and I’m not just referring to Delap’s throw-in’s).

Sunderland started the game without Darren Bent who was suffering from a hamstring injury but our super Ghanaian striker Asamoah Gyan capitalised and started up front alongside the energetic Danny Wellbeck. Up until yesterday’s game we’d seen very little of Gyan and from the glimpses we had seen it was difficult to form a real opinion of the lad. He did of course smash in a sweet volley away at Wigan and a bullet header in the League Cup at home to West Ham so the signs of quality were there.

We began the match positively and Sunderland were rewarded with a goal after only nine minutes. With some quick and stylish interplay down the right hand side the ball was eventually crossed inside to Onuoha, his resulting shot was palmed away by goalkeeper Asmir Begovic directly into the path of the waiting Asamoah Gyan who calmly placed the ball into the back of the open net.

1-0 to the lads.

You could almost feel the tension lift within the ground and a slight air of relief followed as Sunderland pushed on for another goal.

Sunderland continued to cause Stoke problems and it wasn’t long until Gyan was making a nuscience of himself once again. Forcing his way into the box, Gyan ran towards the byline only for Jon Walters to clumsily bring him to the ground and referee Martin Atkinson swiftly awarded a penalty. At this point I was fully expecting Gyan to step up and slot in his second of the game, so when Steed Malbranque, a player who has scored one solitary goal during his time at Sunderland jogged up to the spot the chances were he was going to miss. Sure enough Steed hit a tame, Micky Gray-esque penalty into the diving hands of Stoke’s Begovic and the team from the Potteries were still very much in the game.

The second half was end to end. Stoke went extremely close when Jones managed to get on the end of an Etherington cross. Mignolet was left flapping in the Sunderland area (this happened all too often yesterday) and Jones’ header looked a certain goal but for Lee Cattermole’s quick-witted, headed/shouldered/handled clearance, fantatsic improvisation it must be said. It was a sure handball, he should have received his standard red card but the referee obviously had a Sunderland win on his coupon so fortunately for us it was waved away. I’d like to add however, a very similar incident went in Stoke’s favour only a few seasons ago at the Stadium of Light. On that occasion Rob Styles managed to miss a double handed save on the line from Danny Pugh. What goes around comes around? Apparently so.

That really was Stoke’s best chance to get back into the game and it appeared to have really dented their confidence. Sunderland continued to press on and when Danny Wellbeck was brought down outside the box after going past Ryan Shawcross, referee Atkinson deemed the challenge worthy of a second yellow card and Shawcross was given his marching orders. It was game over at this stage.

In the final moments Richardson broke forward, ran to the line and crossed a dangerous low ball into the penalty area. The cross deflected kindly to the oncoming Asamoah Gyan who smashed a clinical shot to the right of Begovic and into the back of the net. 2-0. Quality finish.

All in all a good result. Just what we needed after Sunday’s debacle.

Next up…Spurs at White Hart Lane. Come on!

Don’t forget to sign up to the Sunderland Football forum and get involved:

If you hadn’t noticed, the skunks are back in the Premier League and tomorrow we play them at the Sports Direct stadium for the first time since our 1-1 draw back in February 2009.
Newcastle that day lined up looking like this:

Newcastle: Harper, Taylor, Bassong, Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Gutierrez, Butt, Nolan, Duff, Carroll, Ameobi.

Now a season on and a championship campaign behind them they will be going into the game tomorrow possibly fielding 7 of the same players who played against us that day and those 7 same players were largely to blame for their eventual relegation from the top flight. If you can remember Newcastle were outplayed for considerable portions of that game and they managed to salvage a point after Taylor dove in the box to cheat referee Howard Webb into awarding them a penalty.

Looking back on the Sunderland side that day in 2009 we lined up as follows:

Sunderland: Fulop, Bardsley, Ferdinand, Collins, McCartney, Edwards, Whitehead, Richardson, Malbranque, Cisse, Jones.

However our side tomorrow will look something like this:

Mignolet, Bardsley, Turner, Bramble, Onuoha, Malbranque, Cattermole, Henderson, Wellbeck, Elmohamady, Bent.

Subs: Gordon, Da Silva, Mensah, Riveros, Zenden, Richardson, Gyan

So in comparison we have only two players pushing for a place in our side who played in the previous derby fixture. It shows we’ve come a long way since we last met and there’s no doubt our squad has seen some drastic improvement.

Sunderland approach the game tomorrow against Newcastle having not been beaten in the Premier League for seven games. In those seven games we have beaten Man City, Villa and drawn with the likes of Man Utd. Arsenal and Liverpool (three sides we outplayed and were awfully unlucky not to have beaten).

Newcastle United on the other hand have failed to win one of their last three home games against Wigan, Stoke and Blackpool.

We all know form tends to go out of the window for the derby games but if we can remain organised as we have been, stick to our game plan and our players perform like we know they can then there’s no reason we shouldn’t come away with all three points.

Newcastle have looked seriously shaky at the back and some amongst us believe it might be an idea to start with both Bent and Gyan tomorrow to really give them something to think about. However, Bruce has appeared to mould Sunderland into a team who are tough to beat and our results of late have been more than acceptable so it may be best to keep the team and the formation the same.

It’s a big game so early in the season and a win could really kick start our season. It gives the club a great chance to signal their intent and a chance to show the fans what we can expect from the season ahead.

We expect nothing more than non-stop chanting from beginning to end.

Ha’way the lads!

Here’s a cracking pre-match video I found on youtube to help get you even more up for the match tomorrow!