Samu Saiz at ease

I dunno, you probably shouldn’t spit at anybody, but you spit at one guy? Once? And it causes all this? Samu Saiz, on the cusp of making himself and manager Thomas Christiansen into unlikely promotion heroes, or at least near-missing cult legends, had it all fall apart one steel Sunday in Newport, gobbing angrily at Robbie Willmott, who had celebrated a late winner by pushing Saiz to the ground.

Newport County should have been a synonym for Saiz’s glory that season, and maybe that’s how the trouble all started. Saiz and Ezgjan Alioski were so good in a 4-1 Carabao Cup win over Michael Brown’s Port Vale — featuring Michael Tonge and Danny Pugh, too — and so annoying — that Gavin Gunning got himself sent off for kicking Alioski and Browneh falsely accused Saiz of spitting at one of his players (I went through the footage looking for that phlegm like a conspiracy theorist seeking bullets from the grassy knoll — it didn’t happen).

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