John McCormick writes: last November I took a look at the Deloitte Money League (https://safc.blog/?p=38977), which ranks clubs according to income from matchdays, broadcasting rights and other commercial activities, including sponsorship …
This is the final piece of a series I started around Christmas. It wasn’t intended as a series, it just turned out that way. Idle speculation about the importance of goal difference in the relegation dogfight led to the first post, in which I wrote “I’m going to stick my neck out and say that the five (from SAFC, the Mags, Villa, Wigan, Southampton and Fulham) whose goal differences show the greatest improvement in the second half of the season will avoid relegation, irrespective of their points on Boxing Day, and a consistent decline will point to the doomed team”.
The headline, untouched by M Salut’s hand, is noteworthy for the absence of Sunderland from the list of contenders for the last of the bottom three slots. We must all (save for visiting supporters of the other affected clubs) take comfort from John McCormick‘s scholarly ways, sincerely hope he knows what he’s doing and be assured he is not tempting fate … it is the latest of his studies of how fluctuating goal differences may affect the outcome of the pressing Premier issue that remains to be resolved following Man Utd’s confirmation of the title
“Thank goodness that’s over” says Pete Sixsmith as we scrape a point against a far better Newcastle side. Talk of getting out of jail, fat ladies singing and clutching at straws dominate these observations on a bitterly disappointing derby performance. We need to do better next year !!!!
At 13:48, with the clock running down, I sent my Seven winging across the seas to M. Salut in Penang. “Once again found lacking when it mattered” were my words as we huffed and puffed against a side who were threatening to score a second, and take a deserved three points home with them.
For the umpteenth time we pushed forward with effort rather than skill. The ball dropped to Bardsley who whipped in a shot, Harper parried it and Asamoah Gyan poked it over the line to level the scores.
Wild celebrations from those around me; much jumping about and a feeling that we had not only got out of jail, but that we had kidnapped all the Prison Officers, burnt the place down and reformed the entire criminal justice system. The Fat Lady (or middle aged Man in this case) was singing his head off at this one. Games last for 90 minutes!!!
Quite frankly, we were awful. Whatever weaknesses we had seen against Blackpool and Notts. County were magnified 100x in this scrappy, bitty and, for us, ultimately disappointing derby.