Sunderland never Cisse to amaze me - View from the North Stand

12:10pm Friday 22nd August 2008

BACK in 2005, a gang of Sunderland fans, bored with their club's lack of progress in the transfer market ahead of the 2005-2006 Premiership season, decided to send the local press on a bit of a wild goose chase.

Using different aliases on different messageboards both in the UK and abroad, they created the story that beanpole striker Jan Koller was set to sign for Sunderland.

They made up quotes from the player, the player's agent and also revealed that the news was on Borussia Dortmund's website.

Of course, there was absolutely no truth in it whatsoever, but Sky Sports, BBC Sport and a local provincial newspaper got wind of the story and, without checking any facts, ran with it.

It left the press red-faced, and split the fans. A third found it hilarious, another third thought it was disrespectful, and the final third, ever optimistic, still believed that the transfer would go through.

Fast forward three years, and the news hit us on Wednesday afternoon that Djibril Cisse was set to sign for us. The source? Olympique Marseille's website.

Sound familiar? I was wary of it, certainly. Cisse had been linked with Man City earlier on in the summer, and I just thought it would be too good to be true.

Cisse is by no means past it. He's just 27, had a strong season for Marseille and looks to be back to his best after two sickening leg breaks in the space of 12 months when he was with Liverpool.

But no. It's actually true. Cisse has signed, alongside David Healy, Northern Ireland's most prolific striker but not too hot domestically.

Add to that possible signings of Leighton Baines and Jonny Evans, rumoured, naturally, but if they came off, I'd be delighted.

Cisse is a class striker, there's no two ways about it. Once Kenwyne Jones returns, we'll have to switch to a system that accommodates both players. That'll be 4-4-2 then.

Baines and Evans would fill the missing pieces of the jigsaw, and on paper, our squad would look capable of attaining a comfortable top-half placing in the Premier League.

For the first time in a long while, we'd have, I reckon, a better first team line-up than Newcastle United.

I've got a strong feeling that we could be top cats this season. And that's not on the back of the latest clutch of players.

Middlesbrough and ourselves have a settled squad which seems to have gelled well so far.

Newcastle didn't disgrace themselves against Manchester United, but Keegan has never been one to build teams. He's been the type of manager to get lucky with individual players of great class, and Newcastle continued that policy after he left and before he rejoined.

Enough about them though. We played well enough on Saturday to beat Liverpool.

Our passing was the best I've seen it in years, some great skill and movement was on show. It was just a shame we couldn't find a breakthrough.

Daryl Murphy had a difficult game but at times he looked like he was going through the motions, whereas the midfield ran their socks off to create chances going forward.

Substitutions reverted our team back to last season's, with the exception of Pascal Chimbonda, and we looked flat and clueless with about 20 minutes to go.

It was encouraging to see what we were like with the new players. A couple more faces brought in could see us pick up some great results this season.

That brings me on to tomorrow's trip to London, to face Tottenham Hotspur.

We haven't won at White Hart Lane in a good while, but I really think that tomorrow represents our best chance of breaking that duck.

The only problem being that Tottenham will know our players better than we do, almost. Former Spurs men Malbranque, Reid and Chimbonda will all line-up, while Teemu Tainio misses out through injury.

Who knows, if Cisse signs in time to play on Saturday, it could be a very happy journey back North.

Eating Out