................and buy................

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Answers

....30 yr old Joachim Bjorklund for £1.5m from Serie A strugglers Venezia (so he should be at home at he SoS then).

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Another defender!!!!!!!! Know little about him and he could be great BUT if I were a Makem (and than god I'm not) I would be a little upset at the lack of attacking options being purchased.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Have to say I am not at all surprised by this. £1.5m is about all the Mackems like to spend, and a defender is exactly what they need to get them a few more goals.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Exactly Paul. Especially as apparently he's never scored a goal in his professional career. Bet he breaks that bliddy duck on 24th Feb :-(

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Jocke Björklund has been a regular in the Swedish national team for at least 7 or 8 years, maybe more. He quit playing the national team last year when Olof Mellberg (Villa) took his place. He formed a great partnership with Patrik Andersson (Barcelona) who won Sweden a third place in the WC 94. Patrik A has always been the better of the two but Björklund is a pretty good defender also. He's very fast (at least he used to be, havent seen him play in a while) so the likes of Owen and Bellamy could be in trouble. For that kind of money I think they have made a good buy.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

You're biased though, being Swedish :)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

Ah - so that's confirmed he's a has-been ;-)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

He may be a good player, but it's not the point really. Reidy has to prioritise.

For example, we have two great 'keepers, so it would be pointless going after, say Dean Kiely or David James.

Sunderland need a striker to partner SK, so they buy a 30 year old Swedish centre back. Makes sense. (although if he's 6ft 10 or something I know what sort of role he'll play)

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

if Sunderland had conceded one less goal in each of their last three games they'd be 5 points better off, and could still have been challenging for the Intertoto Cup place

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

But if they'd scored one goal more they'd be in the same position!

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2002

You think Chimp features will remember to post the Intertoto application this time?

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

last year they didn't aply cos they were in a Champions League position at the time and it would have shown a lack of ambition, this year they'll not bother cos it would show too much ambition.

I know its only the end of January, but it really should be about January time that we have to compare the exhaustion shown from our Intertoto games with the freshness shown by the Sunderland players who only played Mansfield friendlies.

I'll ignore us against Peterboro as they didn't have the opportunity to play in that round of the cup ...

Sunderland played 6 won 1 drawn 2 lost 3 For 6 Against 10 Newcastle played 6 won 3 drawn 1 lost 2 For 10 Against 6

The Newcastle deeats being against Chelsea and Man U, the Sunderland defeats against Ipswich, West Brom and Everton

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002

Statistics can be so comforting at times :-)

S*****land in a Chumps League spot (shudder) ...the sun would turn black!

-- Anonymous, January 29, 2002