Dear Roker Report,

It looks to me that by the time any transfers come about all the best will be elsewhere, and those out of contract will be long gone.

In my 70+ years as a supporter of Sunderland they always have dragged their feet over transfers, and it feels like at my age I will never see them out of this league in my lifetime.

Tom Hancill

Ed’s Note [Gav]: Christ, Tom - cheer up marra! It’s not all bad. As I write this, the vast majority of players’ contracts haven’t even expired yet, and players don’t become officially free agents until July 1st. Pre-season training only started yesterday!

In 70 years you’ve suffered more than most I imagine and I don’t begrudge you feeling let down, but this is a new era for the club and a new way of doing things. I’m being patient and hoping their long term plan works out well, and instead of rushing into signing a bunch of players just to appease people who are feeling impatient, they’ll take their time and bring in players who can really make a difference in this next season.

I guess the time to judge this transfer window is way, way down the line.

Keep the faith!

Dear Roker Report,

After the abject first play-off leg with Lincoln, one wonders what instructions were given to the players. Only one or two players were worthy of the shirt, and as such it was a non-event. For such an important game against a side which were pretty average, it was woeful. However, it should not have rested on one game..... the games lost in the closing ten matches or so sealed their fate.

Erik Strodl

Ed’s Note [Gav]: I guess we’ll never know. I imagine it was a culmination of many things - and I’m not trying to give them excuses, especially since most other clubs also had gruelling schedules, but the three games a week coupled with a long EFL Trophy run meant our players had plenty of minutes in their legs by the time those big end of season games came around.

Chiefly I’d put it down to our horrendous luck with injuries in defence. O’Nien, Gooch and Power were asked to play a lot of football at the back, and it seemed clear to me that Bailey Wright just wasn’t fit enough, but was probably playing with some niggles affecting him. We missed Dion Sanderson, our best defender last season, and barely got to see any of Arbenit Xhemajli. Tom Flanagan was another who clearly wasn’t ready to play. Denver Hume too - another who struggled all season with hamstring problems, meaning we had to play McFadzean - our worst player by a mile - in almost every game.

Shit luck in that regard, I guess.

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