qwertyell

That's a random name to throw up out of nowhere. Hmm. (another 3-at-the-back dolt, mind you)

What about a manager that then gets back to back relegations to League One? I mean, I think he's all right. Solid. But we're terrible playing 3 at the back, and that's his MO. Not a good fit, for me.

Maybe this Lord Pannick isn't quite as formidable as advertised. Just expensive. Or he used to be good until we hired him, then he immediately turned to shit. A Saints tale as old as time.

Won't be us laughing - he's a three at the back devotee.

Irrespective of the outcome (whenever that may be, after all the appeals, posturing, and impotent rage have been exhausted), my opinion (for what it's worth) hasn't changed since May: everyone involved in this amateurish debacle should've been punted into the sun. This wasn't one man's "mistake" - numerous people were in on it (even those that no longer worked for us), endorsed it, reportedly joked about it. All watched over by a Sporting Director who was either completely oblivious to the goings on at the club he's supposed to be watching over, or has worked hard behind the scenes to keep his name out of the scandal, and a CEO, who is at least credibily ignorant, given that he appears to know fuck all about anything at any given moment. A culture of cheating, arrogance, and incompetence blew up spectacularly in our faces, caused enormous damage to the club on and off the field - and continues to do so. A hard reset should've been the most obvious way of drawing a line in the sand and trying to move forwards: cut out the rot, start again afresh. Yes, it would've been challenging, and we'd be losing some decent people, but we would've had two months to settle things down before the season commenced and we could concentrate on the football alone. Now we're facing a mid-season upheaval, stalked by a perpetual cloud of uncertainty. We could've knocked it all on the head months ago. Protecting the club should've been the board's priority. Not getting promoted last season was damaging. Not getting promoted this season will be even more damaging. Prioritising instead protecting the guy whose actions were the reason we didn't get promoted, knowing full well that there were further charges impending that would almost certainly have significant negative effects on this season's promotion push was a reckless gamble that seems destined to fail, like everything else they do. Allowing the issue to spill over into this season, beyond the points deduction, and imagining we'll just power through it and acheive our goals anyway is pure hubris. Whether Tonda is a promising manager or not, the rules are silly or not, the punishment excessive or not, we're the real victims or not, is neither here nor there. We're in a crappy situation of our own making, and the decisions that needed to be made to claw our way out of it have only burrowed us deeper into the mire. Ironically, appointing Tonda is about the only good decision Sport Republic have ever made - but even that has ended up with us in a worse position than where we started. They really can't do right for doing wrong.

Given that his previous bullshit defence was that he didn't know the rules, it'd be wild if his defence has now switched to "I was specifically telling them to do it within the rules. That I didn't know about." We have the worst fucking lawyers.

I thought everyone in football thinks it's all been overblown and a bit of a joke. Neil's obviously not getting his news from saintsweb.

"They wouldn't be selling tickets for the final if we were about to be kicked out."

It's the three seperate instances of spying that will probably bury Tonda, I think. Each one is an individual charge. A one-off offence could perhaps be explained away as a miscalculation of the allowable timeframe for scouting the opposition. Hands up, our bad, take the small hit, move on. Three times is a deliberate trend of cheating for which we have no credible defence (other than, apparently, whining about how unfair it is to hold us to account, and some guff about local businesses). Hypothetically, if the FA were to apply the red card standard where each further transgression gets an extra game of suspension, Tonda could be looking at, say, 3 matches for Oxford, 4 for Ipswich, and 5 for Boro. Could we live with a 12 game touchline ban? That's going to be the best part of 3 months of disruption. There's no way we can weather 3 months of drifting without a manager if it's a total ban from footballing activities. What a mess of our own making.

Parsons sounds as unconvincing as you'd expect.

Good, get it done. Then we can finally draw a line under it and get on with the season without all the uncertainty hanging over our heads. Albeit, we chose this path, knowing full well that we were going to face further sanctions and disruption, rather than cleaning house and moving on in the summer. We've got no excuses for not having rock solid contingency plans in place, regardless of the outcome.

The guy we signed to be his back up/competition isn't fit for purpose. Same reason Larin stayed on so long.

I suppose this patchy start to the season has somewhat dispelled the idea that Tonda is the special one who has cracked football management and we'll be bereft of hope when he gets banned/canned and needs to be replaced. Someone else could easily come in and match our current output.

Premeditaed. On three seperate occasions. That'll be the kicker - it wasn't a one off rule break.

It's not some great conspiracy. The FA disciplinary process moves slowly for everyone. We're not a special case. You can go through their August judgements here https://www.thefa.com/news/2026/sep/10/fa-charges---august-2026-100926 and see that 4-5 months from incident to resolution is pretty common.