The Wyvern

You are unable to follow a simple logical example, so we’ll leave it there.

If he’d been found guilty but the punishment was a fine no-one would really care and no-one would be suggesting he or SR should be sacked/replaced. Probably be taken out of our hands anyway, but this is all a reaction to the punishment not the crime.

I don’t think anyone believed that did they.

That’s my point, it’s an emotional reaction to the severity of the punishment, if we’d been found guilty, got hit with a fine and be playing at Wembley in a couple of days most of our support would still be singing his name.

But we all knew one of Tonda’s coaching team had been caught spying. Nothing has changed since then apart from the severity of our punishment. That is what this is a reaction to.

A ban obviously takes it out of our hands, but why was no-one calling for Tonda to be sacked this time last week? By that point it was clear we’d done something wrong and he’d have been involved in it, but we thought we were still going to Wembley so no-one cared.

I think Sports Republic have been consistently shit for us, but would we be getting the same reaction from supporters if the panel had found us guilty and just whacked us with a heavy fine and nothing else? A lot of this is an emotional reaction from our fans to the severity of the punishment, rather than the “crime” itself.

Exactly. Gibson seems to have dictated all this from the very start.

As stated above the punishment has matched exactly with what Middlesbrough asked for from the very start. That has to be pretty rare in such circumstances surely? Some coincidence that. Not a penny fined.

“Moral bankruptcy”?!? Ffs keep some perspective, they’ve royally fucked up and then managed the fall out dreadfully, but we’ve done nothing different to what many clubs around the world do. It was clear we’d done something wrong 2 weeks ago, why this reaction now?

Anyone know which lawyers we’ve used for this?

This is my take on it. Unbelievably naive, ill-prepared, amateur approach. Wheel out heavy-weight comms control and legal team, tie the process up in knots, drag it out like any other club seems to do when charges thrown at it. We should have the resources at our disposal to do this, but instead have walked into the whole thing not realising how serious it all is and have been absolutely hammered as a result.

Not for me it’s not. Which is what I said in my original post. Not very difficult to understand is it.

Which bit of my post did you not understand?

Which bit of my post do you not understand?

He’s clearly an excellent coach and we’re not going to get better than him so as things currently stand let’s keep him. That said, let’s see what comes out over the next few days and if his position really does become impossible.

I can't imagine that many clubs have open training grounds that can be easily viewed from public space?

Agreed. One step behind Boro in all this from the start. Look at all the other clubs that pull out the heavy weight lawyers, make things difficult and as an absolute minimum get it dragged out until another season. F**k knows who we've been using this for this, same goes for our media team not being on top of the comms at all.

How many clubs have training facilities that can be viewed by the public? Can't be many. We've probably done it a few times and utterly stupid to have done it and be caught like this, but keep some perspective, we can't have been doing it every week.

Whilst this is an an absolute embarrassment and absolutely amateur from the club from start to finish, lets not lose sight that this punishment is vastly disproportionate. Yes what we did was wrong and we've been a completely mess here, but no way is this punishment fair or right. Lets keep some perspective here.

Agreed, utterly, absolutely insane, completely disproportionate punishment, one of the harshest ever in football. Absolute trial by media, like the world has lost their heads. Yes, what we did was wrong, but no way remotely proportionate to this. Also how incredibly amateur from us doing this so sloppily, then letting Boro completely run the media operation on this to set the tone with no bite back from us.

Beat me to it by a couple of seconds. They've played this brilliantly. Its not even an offence in most other leagues around the world. Utter, utter madness.

The Middlesbrough media department have done an incredible job on this, to the point where a multi-million £ fine and points deduction is seen as a good result. Utterly, completely insane.

That’s what they should do in a sensible world, just not worth the hassle for them and most football competitions have survived quite happily without it. But laws are very rarely reversed.

Still far too harsh for me.