Unfortunately the score of Sunderland 1 Man U 0 couldn’t last and now it’s 1-2. Sunderland fired their manager, a mad “charismatic” Italian, because he was too fascist (pro-Mussolini and given to the old stiff-armed salute when playing for Lazio) but what the Sunderland players couldn’t stomach was being told they couldn’t have mayonnaise, ketchup and Coca-Cola. Yet you do probably have to be a dictator to be a successful manager. Jose’s family, someone said, comes from good junta stock. Ferguson was, in spite of his socialist principles, not in the business of democracy. His (Scottish) successor seems too nice, too nervous, too in awe of what they call the legacy. He needs time to settle, everyone agrees, while checking with the betting shop to see what the odds are on him being gone by November. Tough Scots seem to make the best English managers. David Peace, having done Brian Clough, has moved on to write a fat book on the late Bill Shankly, another granite Scot, worshipped as a saint in Liverpool, who said that football was more important than something, MoL forgets what; life, maybe. MoL says football is maybe more important than breakfast but not much and wonders sometimes if we would miss it if it weren’t there, or TV news or sit-coms.