James

In the same way that it didn’t matter whether we gained an advantage or not, it doesn’t matter that he only made one appearance. The guy played for Middlesbrough during the period of Steve Gibson’s ownership. There is no clearer conflict of interest than that. They only needed to find 3 people, surely there are other qualified people that haven’t played for fucking Middlesbrough. The whole thing stinks massively.

It takes literally five minutes to work this out with respect to both of them, two Google searches and you have found the answers…!

Member of the committee accused of not being independent, says he was independent. What a total non-story, what was he supposed to say? Another ball dropped by Saints IMO, should have pushed for both him and the barrister whose chambers represented Boro a few years ago to be removed.

I just cannot understand how an independent panel, which could presumably select from thousands of qualified people, is comprised of two people who have (however indirectly) a publicly identifiable link to MFC. I’m not saying it would have changed the outcome but it feels really naff.

Completely, but that doesn’t make it the right decision from the perspective of punishing a rule breach, it makes it an understandable commercial decision but not one that should be relevant if a fair procedure is followed.

The point is, the EFL and the Independent Commission have completely messed up any semblance of a fair procedure. Usually a club has a 14 day right to respond and a similar amount of time to appeal, most other of the cases cited even in the judgement took weeks to resolve rather than days. We are guilty, no question of that, but it’s the EFL that put the commission in a position where the only sanction that would satisfy the outside noise was expulsion. In my view, that doesn’t constitute a fair process. I think we’ve been treated incredibly harshly and will continue to believe that, notwithstanding the offences of our coaching staff which are clear.

Exactly this. The way that the Panel has applied the penalty is completely incoherent. They seem to have said the starting point is a 3 point deduction for every regular season game, with a point back as credit for us complying. The consistent way to apply the same penalty in the playoffs would be to award Boro a 3-0 win in the first game. We would likely have lost anyway but teams have come back from bigger deficits. The way the punishment has been applied to the Playoff game has essentially applied a sanction to the second leg even where there is no allegation of any wrongdoing. You can say that you feel our punishment is “fair” or whatever but these processes are worth millions of pounds and should be done properly. From what we are able to gather about this case, it doesn’t seem like proper procedure has been followed to me.

Not technically but they were a direct beneficiary of the punishment imposed.

If the BBC reported squad is correct there are a few pretty weird ones. No Palmer, Toney back in from nowhere, Henderson in…

What relevance has that got to whether or not one of the individuals tasked with deciding the punishment has a conflict of interest? I’m not saying that’s the case here, I’m just saying that in a commercial context it would be highly unusual for an arbitrator to have a prior client relationship with one of the interested parties.

Don’t agree with that at all. Lawyers might not have tribal loyalty but they do have conflicts of interest. In a commercial dispute, neither party would ever agree for one of the arbitrators (as an example) to be someone that had previously represented one of the parties. I don’t know all the facts here but, if one of the independent panelists had previously represented Middlesbrough, that would be a bit odd. There are thousands of qualified sports lawyers out there that would have zero connection to any interested party.

As much as I would love Hull to batter them, it would be absolutely beautiful to watch another OneBoro meltdown when the Hull appeal goes in on Monday.

I feel as though we all collectively forgot that SR never do anything competently. We assumed that silence was projecting confidence. In reality, literally nothing SR has done for us indicated that would be the case.

You might as well laugh at elements of this and the IQ of the Boro fans on X is definitely one of them.

I said at the time we needed to get a grip on it but was shouted down on here. IMO the sanction was already decided before any “process” was carried out. We lost a trial by social media, with a hefty assist with Boro cronies at the EFL.

Worse, we at least tried to defend in the PL. Parsons has seemingly given Gibson everything he needed. Bet he couldn’t believe his luck.

He has to go. Pure incompetence.

We can move forward and still feel the punishment was disproportionate. If anything should just use it as motivation for next season.

*3 times 😉

The self flagellation needs to stop. We’ve essentially been outwitted by a more savvy chairman with conflicts of interest all over the place vis a vis the EFL (conveniently ignored). We’ve been handed a potential death penalty for the equivalent of a speeding fine. Got to get over this asap and adopt a fuck you attitude next season.

Nah, fuck that. 5-0 to Hull to watch the smile from that twat Gibson’s face disappear live on TV.

We all understand it’s different. We can still query why the consequences for us have to be this severe.

Given the total disregard for precedent in this case, Tonda is presumably going to receive a custodial sentence 🤣

He used to be a respectable journalist, now he’s just a hypocrite.

We won’t be able to keep Tonda, that decision is likely going to be taken out of our hands. My view is that we need to clear the decks as soon as possible and not wait for the FA investigation to drag all summer - let’s face it, they aren’t going to do us any favours by moving quickly. We need a new coaching team, to show the fans and the wider football world that we are moving on from this sorry saga.