Wretched, haunted but human: a referee shaped by modern football

Is it really a surprise that an official or someone similar should end up glassy-eyed and spitting toxins on a sofa?

- Barney Ronay

Farewell then, David Coote. You were the one who looks a bit like a hungover version of Ross from Friends. Let's take a look at your best bits. Not sending off Jordan Pickford for an attempted amputation at Goodison Park. Not sending off Fabinho for performing on-spec Achilles keyhole surgery on Evan Ferguson at the Amex.

Plus, of course, the decision to let yourself be filmed propped up on a sofa, saying all the bad stuff out loud, and in the process completing the amazing character arc of the English football referee, from taciturn northern master butcher, to the current crop of beleaguered full-time reality TV stars.

At this point you really do have to hand it to English football. It just keeps on coming up with the most incredible content to fill the holes in an increasingly samey product.

Yesterday's Sky Sports coverage of Coote-Klopp-Cunt, the morning after, was utterly gripping, the entire story presented with a surreal air of appalled solemnity, as though reporting on the breaking news that Father Christmas has been found naked under a pile of cocaine holding the gun that killed Bobby Kennedy.

This mainly involved replaying the footage with key parts tastefully bleeped out, while the two presenters sat ashen-faced at their studio coffee table like community police officers whose job it is to turn up on your doorstep and tell you your dog has been run over. From there it was a huge relief to cut to a consolatory Dermot Gallagher sitting in front of a Welsh dresser, incredibly wholesome content in the circumstances, and a first sign that nature might just be healing itself.

Perhaps PGMOL should turn this whole cycle into a regular post-match feature: shit-talking late-night videos of a glassy-eyed referee explaining the weekend's big calls by insulting people on a sofa, which would at least be more interesting than Michael Owen agreeing with Howard Webb.