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Want to know who really diffused the pitch walk-off in Sunday's AFCON final? Preview Percy has the answer. Well AN answer anyway, Saturday’s visit of Sunderland also get’s a look in too...

Next up we play host to Sunderland at the Olympic. Kick-off is at 12:30 for the purposes of TV, the match being on TNT, or 12:45 should you want to take a leisurely stroll in order to express your displeasure at the way the club s run.




The same old engineering works are in place east of Shenfield where replacement bus services will be running, so with such an early kick-off set the alarms early if you come in that way.

So Sunderland, then. Well they had a storming start to the season with a run that saw them looking good value for the 4th place that they found themselves in for a few weeks. Indeed most commentators are still referring to what a good season it’s been for them. However, that may be distracting from the fact that recent form has been less than ideal for them.

For many of their supporters, beating Newcastle 1-0 was the point at which they would have been happy to see the season end. Results suggest that the same sentiment might have been adopted by some of their players. The sequence since then reads DDDDLW.

The defeat was a 3-0 reverse at Brentford, one of the draws was at Tottenham, where they required an 80th minute equaliser to spare their blushes whilst the latest win came from behind against Crystal Palace, who are vying with Tottenham for the title of the league’s most dysfunctional club.

All of that has left them in 9th place with 33 points from 22 games – one place behind their Geordie rivals who have a better goal difference. Safe enough then, but the drop off in form should still be raising a little concern on Wearside.

Daisy informs me that three weeks into the 2026 window they have brought in just the one player in the form of Ivorian winger Jocelin Ta Bi who arrived from Maccabi Netanya for £3.5m. I went to Netanya many years ago, spending most of my time explaining to everyone that I wasn’t actually Jewish.




Remind me to recount the tale of how I ended up as an honorary member of the British Netball Squad out there one day. As for Ta Bi, it may be that I spent more time in Netanya than he did, given that he spent his two years there on loan at Hapoel Petah Tikva.

On the absence front, they will welcome back Habib Diarra (Senegal) and Chemsdine Talbi (Morocco) both of whom were part of Sunday’s shenanigans out in Morocco, more of which later. Former Hammer Arthur Masuaku will miss out with an ankle injury that will keep him out of contention for another month at least whilst Traore will need another two weeks to recover from a knee problem.

And so we move on to this week’s look at the wild & wacky world of Association Football. And things don’t get wild and wackier than Sunday’s African Cuppasoup, which frankly was the most bonkers match I’ve seen in a long while.

Now it’s fair to say that over the course of the tournament, the host nation had been on the receiving end of some rather favourable treatment from the match officials. So what happened after our own Diouf was penalised for a foul in the box shortly after being pulled up for something similar in the opposition box may have been as much the culmination of a tournament’s worth of frustration as it was a protest against the particular decisions in question.

The coach led the Senegalese squad from the pitch with the exception of Mane who stood around with everyone else, arms on hips. Then Donald Trump jetted in on Air Force One and personally defused the situation so that the game could continue. Or at least that’s what his next speech is likely to say. Remember you heard it here first.

I mean that was mad enough but, come on, who genuinely had money on a failed Panenka coming next? The sort of conspiracy theorists who bang on about how we never went to the moon (we did, get over it you muppets) were muttering about how the penalty must have been missed on purpose, nobody quite getting around to answering the question: Why?




And so, from the second funniest match of the weekend to the funniest. It’s always hilarious to beat them, particularly at the Toilet Bowl. Even funnier were the conversations they were having about the match on the train on the way up there.

The lot in my carriage were convinced that this was going to be the win that was going to set them up on a run of wins that would see them pushing for a European place. Genuinely.

I checked with Mr Winstone at his turf accountancy and he informed me that, even before the match, he’d have given shorter odds on a failed Panenka in the Cuppasoup final. The first half was all us and we should have gone in more than the one goal to the good really.

I do worry when we sit back like we did in the second half, though, the goal apart, we looked fairly comfortable. There was a minor scare when they claimed a penalty but the VAR review decided that, contrary to their usual MO, they would adhere to the old-fashioned principle that a player has to actually touch the ball for handball to be given.

The winner ought to have come about a minute earlier – a last-ditch block preventing a certain goal. However, Ollie Scarles seems to have been working on his delivery from corners. That, coupled with the home team’s defence resembling the Keystone Kops (ask your great-great-great grandparents) meant that we actually looked more of a threat to our opponents at corners and Wilson prodded his third touch of the game into the net.

They tried to disallow it, of course. Oh how they tried. The ‘keeper’s claim to have been fouled was dismissed on the grounds that even VAR couldn’t be that embarrassing. So they looked for an offside. It took them forever to count the players playing Wilson onside, counting them for ages just to make sure. Even then we saw out the stoppage time comfortably.




This seemed to upset the suited and booted elderly Richard Wattis lookalike in the posher seats near us (we’re probably only back as Great-Great Grandparents for that reference), his reaction to what was pretty light winding up from the visiting support (it had happened again after all) being on a par with what might have been expected had we somehow come up with a chant that referenced the fact that he actually resembled a Richard Wattis lookalike.

Of course, the trick is to build on what, in fact was three points from a dreadful side who will stay up only by virtue of having scraped enough points earlier on this season. We have what is pretty much a full squad from which to select.

Diouf will return to duty once he’s finished laughing at the replay of Sunday’s match. Paqueta’s “back injury” isn’t due to heal up until the ink is dry on a deal with Flamengo whilst Fabianski’s back may have been exacerbated by laughing too much at football on the box this weekend.

So to the prediction, then. Well I have a good feeling about this one. Not just because of last weekend’s win – it was only Tottenham after all. I saw enough in the first half to suggest that if we keep on the front foot we can profit from our efforts. The main thing is to not spend the second half of matches sitting back.

If somehow that message can get through to the players I can see us picking up another 3 points. So with that in mind the £2.50 I was going to wager on there being a failed Panenka in every Premier League match this weekend, will instead be going on a home win – make it 2-1 to us Mr Winstone, if you will.

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at the Olympic: Won 1-0 (Premier League October 2016)

A game we dominated and should have had wrapped up well before Winston Reid netted his stoppage time winner. A bit of a collector’s item in that it was a) a shot rather than a header and b) it was a shot from outside the box.

Referee: Thomas Bramall

Looks as confused as the players he referees – never a good sign.

Danger Man: Granit Xhaka

The fulcrum of much of what they do.

Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Sunderland Fact Of The Week Type Thing

Sunderland is believed to have been the home of Britain’s first female serial killer, who, in the 1800s, is believed to have killed 21 people, including 3 of her husbands and 11 children with arsenic being her poison of choice. Well it passes the time I suppose.


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