Ted Bates Statue

I'm wondering when we were slapped with the initial decision, why didn't we ask to separate the appeal for the points deduction, for it to be heard at a later date in the very distant future. There was no need to get a 24-hour verdict on that particular aspect.

TBF for a while I think he might have stepped down to let Tonda's football do the talking, during that short-but-sweet period where we went 21 matches unbeaten

I think there could well be a faction within the FA that considers there would be a poetic irony in making an announcement after 1:30pm on the 13th of August, leaving us just 72 hours to deal with the ramifications before our opening league match.

Or do a Chelsea and tell Forbesy to get the big laundry basket ready

Bilmey, so it is. Just in time for the offside goal before HT. Too bad there's no English commentary though, for once in my life I'd be prepared to tolerate some youtube nerd live streaming and chatting nonsense in the background.

The precedent was there for the FA to throw the book at Chelsea after their treatment of Luton in the late 2000s. They blew the whistle on themselves and were rewarded by enough points deductions to get launched into the National League. The relative scale of what Chelsea were doing under Abramovic would have meant a pro-rata punishment of thousands of points being deducted, but the FA's initial stance was -15 (which would have relegated them last season) and then decided to row back to the point of giving them no punishment at all. Between Gibson teleporting his team into the playoff final, Trump intervening with the Balogun red card and now Chelsea with their illegal payments, Dragan now hopefully has his eyes fully opened as how all manner of tomfoolery off the pitch can be accepted, providing he can back it up with the right legal team. And I really hope we do now, as we know full well that it'll drive the parmo-eating simpletons up north completely bonkers.

Perhaps the best way of imagining how a WC would look like without UEFA is to take a look at the old Confederations Cup, and while I think it had a better premise than the Club World Cup which replaced it, did anyone ever actually watch it?

Still think anything more than a 3 match touchline ban would be overkill, and over 5-6 matches we'd be looking for a new manager. I disagree, as that would be classified as aggravated breach and come under rule E3.2. The reason for my relative optimism is that he's only been charged under E3.1 which would seemingly relate to the act of spying and not the miscellaneous innuendo around bullying.

Banned from the entire planet. But actually it's not for 10 games, it's 10 million seconds, which I grudgingly accept as a fair punishment

Exactly, all these examples were deemed as aggravated breaches of the basic rule which Tonda was charged under, so it would be really quite something for him to be slapped with a comparable (or worse) ban.

Surely even the Crook wouldn't be so stupid as to take that bait, not exactly subtle when it has his name on it?!

No worries, I'm sure loads of us on here flooded the mailbag with applications. Safety in numbers and all that, we'll be guaranteed to have at least one make it through and infiltrate the FAB.

I'll worry about spelling accuracy when he improves his shooting accuracy. Even his first name is misspelt, so I'm not sure it matters much. Either way, I'm not holding my breath.

As it's not an aggravated breach, I reckon it'll be limited to a 1 to 3 match ban and fine. Assuming that would cover all three charges and they won't be penalised on each individually. It's the same rule breach as the one they charged Tuchel and Conte for their handshake incident in 2022. Tuchel got a 1-match touchline ban and £35k fine for that.

Fun fact... Even in competitive fixtures, Portsmouth have failed to beat any team from Aldershot in nearly 50 years. And they bang on about us somehow being in their shadow... https://www.11v11.com/teams/portsmouth/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Aldershot/ https://www.11v11.com/teams/portsmouth/tab/opposingTeams/opposition/Aldershot Town/