James

Who knows but you don’t get to be as famous as he is in legal circles if you lose a lot of cases. City brought him in for a reason…

If there is no reversal tonight (and I think unlikely, best case we get the 4 points back), I think it’s virtually certain there will be follow up litigation.

I’m trying to get Pannick printed on the back of my shirt but the Shop told me they’ve run out of the letter n…

Yep. He’s not the kind of guy that usually takes cases he thinks he’s going to lose. Whether the “win” is reinstatement though, I think that’s doubtful. My guess is we won’t have heard the last of this no matter what happens tonight.

See the last sentence of my first post.

Exactly. The timing of who is selling tickets to who is literally irrelevant at this point.

Lord Pannick is the best of the best. He managed to get City a reprieve from their European ban, if it’s possible then we have the right man for the job. Those saying why not do it earlier, it’s clear Parsons thought he’d effectively pled this down to a misdemeanour.

I’m in the same place. I don’t think we will get reinstated. The punishment is well over the top but the damage is done now. What happens next, who knows? But I hope we raise hell.

More and more stories about how harsh the sanction is and the possibility of more legal proceedings as a result. Don’t necessarily think it’ll make a difference for us tonight but the EFL have screwed this up royally. If Boro win on Saturday they will have hell to pay on multiple fronts.

Exactly. Just because the appeals process to this disciplinary hearing will close tonight doesn’t mean there aren’t other avenues available to the Club. Not saying they will be successful and they won’t reinstate us to the playoffs but they are available.

If by “us” you mean Parsons then yes, yes he has.

I don’t really know what folks are expecting the Club to say at this point. They have accepted responsibility for the offence and are pointing out that it’s potentially the most severe punishment handed out to an English club (which it is). There’s really no more they can do or say at this point. The appeal will be heard, I doubt anything will change now but the statement is about as good as it gets in the circumstances.

That isn’t how the law works when it comes to assessing damages - you don’t just assume we’d have lost and therefore have lost nothing. Conversely, the loss isn’t £200m either because, as you say, there is a chance Hull win. At the time of the appeal the value of our expected loss is somewhere between 0 and £100m.

Definitely.

Well not really - if you’ve already accepted the charges, all you can do is appeal the severity of the penalty being imposed which, as the statement points out, is completely disproportionate.

This is almost certainly what happened.

I think that’s about as good a statement as they could have put out to be honest. Straight to the point.

This is precisely the frustration but there’s no point in dwelling on it. Football is corrupt and there is always going to be one rule for the big boys and another for smaller clubs that can be made an example of more easily.

Exactly, we don’t need a “good guy”. We need a Gibson, no way he’d have allowed this to happen if the shoe was on the other foot.

100% but this is an SR led club, incompetence.

My anger will eventually subside but honestly why the f*ck would anyone consider renewing right now.

Well, depends on what basis Saints feel they agreed to that accelerated timeline. If they agreed to comply in exchange for what they thought was an acceptable sanction only to have the rug pulled from under them then that isn’t due process, it’s a stitch up.

The only way the club can restore any credibility after this is to immediately remove anyone associated with this sorry affair.

Completely agree. It really is an extraordinary situation and not one that the people at the top of the club seem equipped to handle. They’ve been outwitted by Boro throughout this process, they had a free run to put out whatever media narrative they wanted and we just said there and said nothing.

But that’s exactly how plea deal works. You admit a “lesser” charge in exchange for leniency in the sentencing.