Clarification needed - Tier 2 General Visa rejection

I had applied for Tier 2 General application and I got the rejection letter today. In Points I received two attributes with 0 points and I'm confused if rejection of Sponsorship Attribute lead to rejection of Appropriate Salary CoS. This is what my the letter says.

1. Sponsorship Attribute - 0 points awarded because: ' Your application was made more than three months before the start date of your proposed employment.'

2. Appropriate Salary - 0 points awarded because : ' You have claimed 20 points for Appropriate salary under Appendix A of Immigration rules, but as you have not provided a valid Certificate of Sponsorship reference number you do not qualify for the award of points in this area'

I understand the refusal of Sponsorship attribute 0, thats fine.

My concern is - The Appropriate Salary attribute 0, is the CoS invalid due to time of application and CoS start date mismatch or is it because my salary and the SOC code don't match.

Its really confusing. Could you please make sense of it. Please ask me questions if I need to provide more details.

If they don't recognise your CoS as counting for any points then the salary stated on the CoS counts for nothing.

In short. Since the CoS wasn't valid because of wrong start date, the salary wasn't taken into consideration at all.

Just to confirm. Am I correct in my previous comment ?