coalman

Now the commentators complaining about Stewart dragging a player off him. The same one that tried to rip his shirt off?

Being a northern cunt?

Scienza still limping. FFS put him out of his misery

You mean "baka gaikokujin" surely? 😉

If Scienza has to come off I'd prefer to put Edozie on instead of Fellows. Boro won't know what to do with him. Poor lad is likely to get a kicking though.

Godwin's Law remains a universal constant then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Whatever THB said to Ayling he needs to keep saying it second half.

Because that's the correct way to pronounce his name? In Japanese you often skip "u" sound in words.

GET THE FUCK IN!

Ayling should've had one yellow for the first late challenge on Scienza. Then the next one. And another for dissent.

Card and another one for dissent please

Azaz isn't in the game. Leo is limping and we're being overrun in midfield.

Much better.

We keep just giving it right back to them.

At the very least he has gone out of his way to prejudice any hearing we have. Would be hilarious if it went something like Middlesbrough reinstated to face Hull in the final due to Southampton spying. Immediately followed by Southampton reinstated to face Hull in the final due to Middlesbrough interfering with due process.

I think the EFL needs to be consistent with the rest of the sporting sanctions this season. The only logical course of action is to deduct 10 points from Sheff Wed and award a penalty to Ipswich.

It does make sense. They've turned an easy 2nd place into 5th. Last thing they need right now is to have to win a football match.

He hasn't said anything? That's the universal sign of guilt apparently. What else could he be hiding?

The Boro forum?

Nothing was going to get this process expedited quicker than registering on another team's forum and asking their users to provide proof of wrongdoing. Well done. Now the EFL can throw us out before your team have to try and win a football match on the pitch. Thank God someone is taking the initiative to move this forwards.

In case you've been living under a rock. NO OFFENCE IN THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL HAS BEEN WORSE THAN THIS!!!!!! (or worthy of shouty capitalisation)

I'm pretty sure that means they'll have to debate it in Parliament now, or something.

Realistically there's no way to hold any kind of meaningful hearing before the play off final without invalidating the results of it. So the EFL finds itself in a bit of a bind here. They also, by their own rules, have to allow an independent panel to run it and cannot be seen to be interfering with the panel. Their ideal situation is Boro beat us in the second leg or they have a total mess to deal with in very little time. They also don't want to set a precedent that you can go back and appeal results after the event because every team affected by another team breaching the rules will be looking to rewrite past wrongs in court. In the mean time Middlesbrough's lawyers also know this and will have briefed the club to that effect so the club has decided to make as much noise about it as possible in the hopes of causing sufficient distraction so we don't show up on the pitch knowing full well it might well affect the hearing later. You might argue that it worked during the first half on Saturday but, the longer it goes on, the more it becomes a distraction for Boro than for us. They've had the adrenaline of the immediate outrage and the players have to be wondering why their club isn't confident that they can get the job done on the football pitch. Allied with the sense of hopelessness that, even when they were completely dominant, they couldn't stick the ball in the net. Meanwhile, the Saints leadership has refused to get involved in a public war of words - which allows us to keep focus on the game. On top of that we weathered the storm and came out level when we were at our absolute worst and probably should have nicked it based on the chances we created in the second half. And, if anything the hysteria coming out of Teeside is likely to be motivating for us now.