James

Henry Winter is an embarrassment. He used to be respectable.

Great interview from Solak. He’s right, what we did was wrong but the punishment was disproportionate and the Panel process was essentially a kangaroo court. Only giving us 12 hours to respond to the charges prior to a playoff semi final and then criticising for inaccuracies. What a joke.

Exactly. Whether there was bias or not (and there probably wasn’t) is irrelevant. Saints could and should have used this to question the integrity of the proceedings at the time and/or stall the timeline by having the Panel reconstituted. In proceedings of this magnitude you have to do background checks on the people deciding your case.

This is my fear now. We need clarity on who is going to be the manager first and foremost. I have this lingering fear that he will get banned late into the summer and we end up having to put Lallana in charge. I’d say there is no chance the Club could get blindsided by that but their response to this whole saga has been insanely shortsighted.

Whether there was or wasn’t is irrelevant in my view. Either way it’s a missed opportunity for the Club to have kicked up a huge stink at the time and gotten the hearings either delayed or the Panel reconstituted. As you say, to make the allegation after the fact is pointless unless teeing up a suit against the EFL which feels unlikely.

Didn’t stop the EFL from implying it though with their statement which is disappointing.

The more I read from the Club the clearer it is that we completely and utterly ballsed up our response to this issue when it first arose. How can we be raising objections to Panel members etc in a statement almost 2 weeks after we got kicked out? Surely we could have taken a harder line at the time and kicked up more of a fuss about the way the proceedings were being brought if that’s genuinely what we thought at the time?! Seems to me as if this is covering the bases after the fact.

Realistically there was never going to be. I think the Club are right to be aggrieved at the severity of some of the statements made by the Panel. They say they uncovered evidence of “top down conspiracy” or whatever words they used but, in reality, there is no written evidence for anything of the sort.

It seems to me that is what the Club is alluding to in the statement, that the Panel drew a lot of conclusions from very limited evidence.

The statement raises fair criticisms of the process but, as you say, bit wet after the fact. If the Club were concerned about the independence of the Panel, they should have objected strongly at the time. We have statements from Panel members confirming no objection was raised so, if true, smacks again of not doing the job thoroughly enough the first time…

I assume they are from Will Salt given some of them were sent post-Boro?

Essentially, we accept that the Panel was entitled to make the finding that it did but we don’t accept that interpretation was the only interpretation and we are concerned about the process and independence of the Panel given 2 of the members had links to Middlesborough.

Only one who does it well is Toney. If you’re going to send the keeper you’ve got to hit the target.

Not sure the TNT Sport commentators watched the same game as I did. Full of praise for the Arsenal performance but they did nothing after they scored?

Ridiculous pen by Eze and CB taking the decisive one - what do you expect?

Yes, and based on that precedent presumably would be fined £200k which is irrelevant. It’s a moot point though as I doubt many Premier League clubs have training grounds that can be “observed” in the same way so there’s probably no way to even get an analyst in there!

Something like that would be a materially better solution than rolling with someone like Lallana or Garner. That said, if he’s banned for 3/6 months the club are going to have to wipe the slate clean IMO, no matter how highly they rate him.

An equally bad solution as with Lallana. Garner’s record as a manager is dreadful. If we are serious about promotion we can’t wait for Eckert to serve anything more than a nominal ban. If he gets anything other than a nominal ban we should move for someone like Parker IMO.

If he is banned for any more than a month I think we have to move on. We can’t afford to waste 3 months of the season with some random interim manager, let’s face it, probably Lallana. We need to go all out for promotion next season as, if we don’t, we are on the way to becoming Stoke or Blackburn (or worse) in my view.

It will also be self sabotage if we wait all summer for the investigation to conclude and then have to appoint Lallana or some other budget interim solution.

Agreed, if anything I’m just angry that these clubs we were miles ahead of, even recently, are now so much further ahead of where we are. The team we had at the end of this year was looking like a step back towards good times but this almighty cock up will set us back. I feel similar to when we lost to Derby in the playoffs in 2006/7, the disappointment of not getting promoted was nothing compared to the knowledge that the team we’d see the following season would be stripped of all talent. Feel similar right now.

The one thing that would p*ss off the fan base even more than the current debacle is to replace Tonda with Lallana. If we have to sack Tonda, it needs to be someone with instant credibility otherwise it’ll very quickly turn toxic.

Presumably Gibbo wasn’t able to persuade his mates to move the final. Giving them a free ride after they lost the semi was as far as they were prepared to go.

Maybe Gibbo would have been better off letting us beat Hull and then suing to replace us in the PL? 🤣

Only team to bottle the semi final and the final in the same season 😂😂😂😂