What do we love about The Beautiful Game? Personally, I enjoy the anticipation before each new season. Over the summer the holidays, the soothing sun and cooling rain gradually get us over the hurt and disappointments of the previous campaign, and we look to the new signings. The Black Cats have new arrivals, e.g. Cristian Riveros of Paraguay, who excited us in South Africa with some excellent performances for his home nation; Argentina full-back Marcos Angeleri, Titus Bramble, Belgian goalie Simon Mignolet and Egyptian defender Ahmed Al-Muhammadi. So our defence and midfield is bolstered, but we also look to players who are coming back from long-term injury, and many are itching for the return of cult legend, crowd favourite, folk singer and creative midfielder, Andy Reid.

As emphasised strongly in this SAFC Blog, we need at least one defensive midfielder at Sunderland, to help kill off those games, especially away from home, when we are leading or about to gain a point, and we just need to bore the pants off the opposition. In this context the sale of Lorik Cana was a real loss, even though last season's tactics way from home did not bring out the best in him.

Any of you fans who heard Chris Waddle's superb rant on the BBC after England's defeat will recognise these words: The FA just sit on their backsides and do nothing, tournament after tournament! Why don't they listen, why don't they look at other countries and say, how do they keep producing talent? We coach it out...

I keep telling you, we coach talent out of players! Look at Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney, they haven't turned up at this tournament! Steven Gerrard has had a bizarre season, but they have not turned up, so where do we go? Where is our plan B? We haven't got one! We keep saying we have pacy wingers, we haven't, we haven't got player who can run! But overall the back four cannot control it, cannot pass it, we lack so many ideas, and it is so frustrating! The amount of money in our league is frightening, and all we do is waste it on rubbish ideas!