Editor’s Choice: Here are four Sunderland-themed articles from this week you DO NOT want to miss

After an absolutely thrilling week on Wearside, Editor’s Gav and Tom cast their eyes over articles published on the Roker Report website over the past seven days.

Here’s a selection of their favourite pieces from the last week with a little piece of insight as to why they found these articles to be ones worth highlighting.

Enjoy!

Gav’s Picks

If you ever want to get hyped for an occasion then just seek out anything written by Craig Davies, who produced once again this week with his piece in the build up to our play off semi final second leg away at Portsmouth.

Stirring emotion with passion, Craig touches specifically on what it means to be a Lads fan. We may not always get along, we may all have widely differing views on a whole range of things, but the glue that binds us all is our support for Sunderland.

Aside from the Play-Offs the main talking point amongst the fanbase has been regarding Sunderland’s ongoing ownership situation.

News reports early in the week seemed to indicate that the new investment group who look likely to take up a stake in the club want to bring in their own man to oversee the club’s recruitment department, and former Celtic chief scout John Park apparently heads up their list.

It caused some confusion amongst the supporters, however, and the Newcastle Chronicle even claimed that Tony Coton - who is Sunderland’s current chief scout - had left his role, something which was later rubbished by Stewart Donald on Twitter.

And with the debate stirring, Tom Atkinson wrote this thought-provoking piece about whether Sunderland need such a dramatic change in structure. Having failed with the Director of Football experiment in the past, is now the right time to re-explore it?

Tom’s Picks

If you’ve never had the pleasure to read over Tom Walsh’s excellent Cans and Megabus series, then you’re genuinely missing out on what is a consistently cracking read.

Sardonic humour coupled with an amusing faux superiority complex creates these quirky narratives that are properly amusing. For example:

Regular readers of this column (both of you) will know that this is the section where I eviscerate the latest bunch of mugs that are unfortunate enough to face the might of Sunderland Association Football Club. Whether it be a humourous point in their history, the state of their badge, the fact that one of their former managers got caught up in an alleged sex tape scandal (pouring one out for you Paul Jewell, love yer big man) or their commitment to creating their own banter era.

Walshie’s harsh realities are fantastically written and blend derision, gallows humour and sarcasm perfectly. Give them a read!

My second pick focuses on Jimmy Lowson’s critique of the way in which Sunderland have approached youth development.

Josh Maja and Denver Hume aside, Lowson argues that the club haven’t done a particularly impressive job in nurturing their youth contingent - especially considering we’ve loaned in other clubs’ youth prospects to play ahead of our own.

I have a feeling that these issues will come to a head this summer. Donald’s suggestion that young players who drag their heels over contract negotiations won’t be part of the first-team squad going forward will inevitably lead to some blow back - especially if the club can’t actually guarantee said players first team minutes if they do sign a deal.

It’s an interesting debate, and Jimmy does a good job of analysing the situation.