qwertyell

Well, we've tried him now as a winger, a number 10, and a striker to no avail. At least his level of performance has been pretty consistent.

Haven't looked particularly good for a while now - don't let two ugly wins overshadow how disjointed and stilted our play has become. Could have quite easily lost that. Something's not clicking. We've got a proper run of games against teams at our level now - if our standards don't improve quickly, they won't be much fun.

Spors has fucked us until at least January by not signing a viable striker alternative to Larin. One injury or one loss of form away from having to improvise with an out of position winger/10 is appalling squad planning.

Not one for predictions, but I'd bet my house if it's 0-0 going into the 102nd minute, Bolton are not sending their keeper up for a set piece.

Dodgy. Wonder if Azaz will be leading the line again, as he did for much of the second half at the weekend. Diminutive strikers playing up on their own, which would be the case with Dobbin, are a proven bust for us in this or any league. Fellows might not have set the world on fire, but he's at least shown more in one season than Edozie has in four years - with the added bonus of actually wanting to be here. Strong bench. We'll need it.

Even before the sending off I didn't think the change of balance was working. We were slow going forward, and vulnerable on the break. A better team than Portsmouth would've hurt us.

Fucking hell. Looks like he's going to burst into tears. He's been way off the pace, to be fair. Need half time now.

Glad we were wearing our black knickers. Hides a multitude of sins.

Honestly, who gives two shits what anyone else thinks now? We've had our time in the barrel, but it's done. Leave them to wallow in their own misery while we crack on.

There was no suggestion in the Panel's findings that the EFL sanctions were disproportionate, and that the three things that were "all" Tonda did weren't in contravention of FA Rule E3.1. Neither the club nor Tonda have been exonerated in any way, shape or form. They just found Eckert's in-person evidence and genuine contrition to be mitigating factors when cutting down their original sanction of a 4 month ban from all footballing activities to a 6 week ban (suspended until the end of next season).

Incredible outcome. Can't believe in our wildest dreams we expected such a nothing burger. Weird feeling to have something go our way for a change. Snap their hands off and absolutely crack the fuck on with the season. Of course, we'll scrape 2 points from our next 4 away games and he'll be sacked by Christmas, replaced by a random homeless Serb who once coached a prison XI - but let's enjoy the moment.

You'd hope we could find some kind of middle ground between a good Premier League manager and Rob Edwards, though. It's not like we haven't had about 5 months to plan for this likely scenario.

Well, we're evidently not special, no matter what mummy says.

Not to go into bat for the FA, but they govern over 40000 clubs across more than 600 leagues. That's a lot of games and a lot of disciplinary cases raised, heard, and appealed since May - and no doubt a backlog of cases being processed from before May. Here are September's just released adjudications, with charges dating back to February. https://www.thefa.com/news/2026/oct/02/fa-charges---september-2026-0201026 We're not being treated differently to anyone else. The system as it currently stands moves slowly.

Yes, it was the only way to draw a line under the debacle and try and move forward. But, hey, we sure showed 'em by defiantly shooting our other foot off.

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.