trousers

Make that 2

In today's training footage, Tonda's not looking like a man with the cloud of a lengthy ban hanging over him... That said, looks can obviously be deceptive...

By the way, I can't remember the exact wording, but whatever happened to the Saints offer to assist with the setting up of a 'commision' to investigate all the other spying activities that we were alluding to in our initial statement? You'd have thought the EFL would have been as keen as mustard to weed out any such other cases, as would we....?

Fair point... although, as a tangential curiousity, there's every chance we might have 'got away with it' if Middlesbrough didn't have this supposed "inside information" on our activities (doesn't alter anything though, I agree)

Whilst 'entrapment' is probably the wrong word, there's every chance that Middlesbrough knew we were intending going up there to observe their training, given they had someone on their books that was a friend/ex-colleague of the Southampton 'spy' and who worked at Saints himself in the relatively recent past...

Yep, fear of repeating myself, but the Canadian women's manager missed the grand total of 3 competive matches during their 12 month ban.

It there a potential risk that the FA could actually increase the punishment if we lost an appeal...? Dunno, just putting it out there as a potential reason for not appealing, were the punishment to be deemed relatively light...

That would be a logical conclusion... If it was, say, a 6 match ban and a fine, we'd have probably exhaled a sigh of relief and taken it on the chin...?

Would a club in this scenario be 'sworn to secrecy' by the FA, or could we have announced that we were appealing the verdict, if we chose to? Not sure why it would be in the club's interest to keep fans in the dark as to what's going on, IF they had the option of disclosing what was occurring...?

Yeah... Was a bit of a rhetorical question... 🙂

Hmm... I admire your confidence....