“Time to Retire the Shearer Chant? Focus on Our Heroes!”

It’s Christmas 2025, Sunderland are sat sixth in the Premier League with 27 points from 17 games, we have international players away representing their countries in the Africa Cup of Nations, we still have enough top-class players in our squad to draw away to an established Premier League team like Brighton – and our nearest and dearest rivals are four points and five places below us!

It should be a situation that should fill any Sunderland fan with festive joy. So why, after yesterday’s trip to Brighton, am I a little grumpy?

It’s something that has been festering with me for a while now, and it came to a head on the South Coast. I joined the train at York to find myself in a carriage full of fellow believers. The group I sat next to had identified a fellow passenger with a moustache, curly hair, and enough of a resemblance to Nick Woltemade that, when he fell asleep after Peterborough, he unwittingly found himself in the middle of a photograph with appreciative SAFC fans.

As we landed at King’s Cross, I disappeared off to rouse Son No. 2 from his post-Anthony Joshua v Jake Paul slumbers in his uni digs before we rejoined the throng heading for Brighton. It was our first time at the Amex and we watched Chelsea equalise against “the Visitors” in their fanzone before heading for the concourse. With a pie and a pint, we stood watching one of the many TVs that Brighton provide for the entertainment of their visitors, hoping that Chelsea could find a winner.

And then it began.

“Shearer is a w__ker, he wears a w__ker’s hat.”

Why are we still singing songs about a Mag almost 20 years after he retired?

Love him or hate him, Alan Shearer deserves his place in the list of England’s greatest strikers. His partnership with Teddy Sheringham at Euro 96 made for one of the best summers of football that I have ever experienced.

But he’s Newcastle through and through. And, as much as I enjoyed his England performances, nothing will beat Tommy Sørensen parrying away his penalty four years later.

There’s a significant proportion of Sunderland fans who weren’t born before he retired, and a boatload more who will never actually have seen him play other than on a Sky documentary. He’s an increasingly rare pundit on Match of the Day, and the only thing of note is his reticence to analyse Sunderland games.

I haven’t been to St James’ Park but I would love it if Niall Quinn or Kevin Phillips had got so much under their skin that the Barcodes were still singing their names two decades later!

The bloke is an irrelevance in 2025, or he should be.

Now go back and read the first paragraph of this article again.

Singing about one of “the Visitors’” heroes in this era smacks of an inferiority complex, and one that does our fanbase no credit. We have our own heroes – past and present. Sing about Xhaka, and Nordi, Talbi, Brobbey, Wilson, Eli, Dan Ballard, and roar for Hume and Roefs. Sing Wise Men Say and Gary Rowell’s song.

Everything has a time and a place, and it’s time to retire the Shearer song.

Or, to put it another way – just stop singing about that Mag, FFS!