Forget the conspiracy theories in the Daily Mail’s report on our owners’ intentions.
In fact, while the timing is rotten, the piece itself (as I have said at Twitter) is journalistically legitimate, thorough and reasonably balanced. Read it or ignore it as you wish. For now, just get behind the Lads for the final, utterly crucial game at Wembley this weekend.
Part one of our mid-season review looked forward to the Christmas games.
Part two looked at what had happened up to New Year’s Day.
Part three was meant to go out after the Luton game. Repetitive strain injury decided otherwise and I still have to take care so here’s what I’ve managed, with a focus on a couple of comments I made towards the end of that second part:
A message from Ken Gambles, whose idea led to our mini-series Rate the Ref, presents an opportunity for Monsieur Salut to offer a final encouragement to supporters to mark Steve Martin’s performance in charge of the 1-1 draw at Charlton.
In his 1-10 list of ratings for each edition of the series, Ken chose a special ignominous mention for one hapless man with the whistle, David Coote. Alongside the (lowest) 1/10 option appears this explanatory note: “Coote-like (the ref for the Peterborough game). Enough said. Abysmal.”
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Regular readers will know that the Salut team make occasional appearances in the official matchday programme. Recent visitors will know that my last contribution came at the end of 2018, when I wrote about my take on the year before the Shrewsbury game.
However, that piece only came about after Sunderland had to fit in an extra cup game following our draw at Walsall.
I was originally asked to do something for the Bristol Rovers programme, with a focus on League One’s promotion challengers over the Christmas/New Year period. The extra game forced a change to the timetable and then other events took over, with the result that the piece I duly sent off never made it into print.
