Sunderland FC

He was parachuted into a safe Labour seat here in the first place, and after giving up his seat, this is too much like a convenient excuse to sever all ties with the North-East. Enjoy New York David.

B East, Bishop Auckland.

I AWOKE on Monday morning and found myself living in a foreign country. England without the NHS.

When do we get to re-join the United Kingdom? No one ever asked us if we wanted to leave it.

All this and Paolo Di Canio, too.

One hopes that the appalling appointment of Di Canio as head coach of Sunderland will finally bring to a head the question of who owns this country’s last great expressions of workingclass culture and last great focal points of local patriotism.

There should be mutual ownership of the clubs by the fans, as in Spain. And there should be municipal ownership of the grounds, as in Italy.

The Americans would never permit ownership of major sports teams by foreign nationals thousands of miles away, who knew nothing about the local culture and who cared only about the money.

They are right. Nor should we.

David Lindsay, Lanchester.

IT is sad to see another football manager losing his job.

However, I was not surprised to hear that Martin O’Neill has been given the sack by Sunderland Football Club (Echo, Apr 1).

One only needs to examine Martin’s record as manager, which I can only describe as depressing. This season, Sunderland have only won seven games and drawn ten.

The loyalty shown to Martin at Sunderland has been exceptional.

Even at our lowest ebb, on Saturday, the crowd was 43,760.

Sunderland is a huge football club and no doubt had it been based in London, Martin would have been picking up his unemployment benefit long before Christmas.

Good luck to him in his retirement, but age does catch up with all football managers.

When it does, I think many managers who are past their best will wish they had retired when they were in their prime as a top class football manager.

Jimmy Taylor, Coxhoe.