No Laff-ing matter – red-faced Black Cats blow it with flute tweet
Sunderland have described a social media post about new signing Kyle Lafferty which inadvertently referred to loyalist pipe bands as a “genuine mistake”.
The Black Cats released an in-house video interview with the 32-year-old Northern Ireland international and photographs of him in the club’s home shirt accompanied by the message, “He’s seven foot and he plays the flute” on its official Twitter account on Monday.
🤝 Welcome, Kyle! #SAFC have completed the signing of Kyle Lafferty, who has penned a short-term deal until the end of the 2019-20 campaign.— Sunderland AFC (@SunderlandAFC) January 10, 2020
That is a line from a terrace song dating back to Lafferty’s time in Scotland with Rangers, and is understood to have been posted by a staff member unaware of the connotation before being swiftly deleted.
A club spokesperson said: “It was a genuine mistake and was removed immediately.”
Lafferty joined Sunderland as a free agent last week after a spell in Norway at Sarpsborg 08 with manager Phil Parkinson looking to add firepower to his squad for a promotion charge in the second half of the League One campaign.
Get FourFourTwo Newsletter
The best features, fun and footballing quizzes, straight to your inbox every week.
FourFourTwo was launched in 1994 on the back of a World Cup that England hadn’t even qualified for. It was an act of madness… but it somehow worked out. Our mission is to offer our intelligent, international audience access to the game’s biggest names, insightful analysis... and a bit of a giggle. We unashamedly love this game and we hope that our coverage reflects that.
‘Arteta, Alonso, Emery, me… none of us were physical players – we needed the understanding of the game. That probably helped us move into management’: Premier League boss reveals reasons for natural career progression
‘England have the players to win the World Cup – it’ll be tough for Thomas Tuchel to do a bad job, with the squad he has at his disposal’ Former Three Lions winger backs new boss after gentle qualifying draw