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It’s been a strange start to the season for Sunderland and I’m not just talking about those pink Elvis kits. Yes, that is a real sentence. They’ve had some rotten luck – if they could’ve picked two players to avoid injury, Dan Ballard and Brian Brobbey would probably have been them – and, after last season’s outrageous exploits, they now sit bottom of the Premier League.
However! Making their first foray into Europe in 52 years, they won their first home game then, on their first trip abroad, they conceded a ridiculous opener, equalised, missed a late penalty … and scored an incredible injury-time winner which was also Noah Sadiki’s first goal for the club, all of which combined into one of the great away-end goons. And no, I’m not enumerating it in such detail because my best mate had to cry off late doors due to a work crisis, I promise; by way of compensation, I’ve demanded he furnish us with photos from Poznan.
So, Sunderland’s trip to Poland will form the centrepiece of our early coverage, but that’s not the half of what we’ve got going on. Little more than a decade ago, if someone told us Milan were going to Bournemouth, we’d have assumed it was in holiday and told them not to miss Sega World or Splashdown in Poole. Now, though, they’re visiting for a game of football, one of the biggest ever played in the town, and Dean Court will be bouncing for what is our featured match in the second part of the evening.
And, in among all of that, we’ve got Crystal Palace’s trip to Besiktas and one of the great – not a word I use lightly in this context – town centre grounds, plus the linguistic derby of Celtic v Celta, Juventus v Rennes, and form team Brighton’s jaunt to Jablonec in the Conference.
