Midfield_General

Boscombe’s 127 year history: Honours: none. Number of major cup finals reached: none Number of European games played: one, this week And yet you seem so proud, it’s sweet really

'Practicing' - what an embarrassing thing to say P7, W1 - how's your season going lads Will make it all the sweeter when we smash them, again, and get Parkinson fired

That’s kind of the point though. That initial reaction was wrong. He thought it was trivial, but it wasn’t. He’s not a lawyer, so his first instinct in any situation that even has the potential to be a legal problem shouldn’t be to guess or go with his gut, it should be to get proper expert advice so he knows for sure the reality and the range of possibilities, however unlikely some of those outcomes might seem. It only takes a quick phone call to the right person to get a view. If he’d done that he’d have been told ‘Actually, you need to be careful here, this could be more serious than you think’. But he didn’t. He had made a catastrophic misjudgement from the very start, but his hubris meant he just assumed his instinctive reaction was right. Then he based his subsequent actions on his incorrect assumption, which is why the situation snowballed completely out of his control so quickly.

Starts tonight

The fact that that is so obvious to you and I, but not to the man who is still running the show, is what’s concerning me.

A serious crisis management plan for a multi-million pound sports organisation includes putting specialist heavyweight legal counsel in place when the nature of said crisis requires it though, no?

Exactly. If he'd put a team of scary lawyers front and centre from the start, then they would have had the expertise to spot when people were trying to string us along or manipulate the situation to their benefit, as well as the power to push back on it and keep some sense of control and balance. But because he thought he knew best he didn't do that, so everyone - Middlesbrough, the EFL, the media - danced rings around him, and here we are. He should have been fired the moment the expulsion was announced, but no, he was left in post to fuck up the appeal as well.

Still only 79. HCDAJFU. Or if we want more of an up-and-coming young prospect, Warnock's only 77.

It was both. Parsons obviously didn't fuck it up on purpose, but he just wasn't qualified to handle it, he was out of his depth, and the main mistake he made was not identifying that. It was hubris. The second it broke he should not have said another word, and should have lawyered up to the absolute max with the best specialist team money could buy, and let them take it from there. But he thought he could keep a lid on it, it all went south from there, and by the time he realised how fucked he was and he started getting on the phone to the people like Pannick who he should have got in from the start, it was too late for them to affect anything.

Fair dos. I really hope you're right!

Yeah. Except they haven't exactly covered themselves in glory in that respect so far have they. We've not only taken it lying down, we've* rolled over on our belly and lubed ourselves up to save them the bother. (* By which I mean Parsons, and the crack team he hired before he toddled off to Peppa World on half term. How that bloke is still in a job is beyond me)

I think it very much depends on who would be running the show while Tonda was out. Let's say he gets a six month ban from football. Who steps in who has the chops to maintain promotion form? If we kept Tonda on while he served a ban, but didn't fire him, it would have to be someone prepared to do it as an interim which you would think would rule out any sort of real quality from the external pool. In that scenario it would be most likely to be someone already at the club stepping in. Garner? Lallana? Neither of them fill me with confidence. If we decided it wasn't worth it and fired him, then we're back to the tombola of SR-led managerial appointments. With Rasmus out of the picture and Spors now proving that he knows what he's doing, I'd have more faith now than this time last year that they might get someone decent, but it's still hard to overlook the fact that pre-Tonda their overall record of appointing managers is absolutely horrendous.

Yep, probably.

Crook (I know) on TalkShite (I know) just now saying that 'people he's spoken to' at Saints 'are fearing the worst' over the punishment heading Tonda's way. No sources, no new facts, he didn't imply that people at St Mary's have been told anything yet (just that they're worried, which isn't really a development), and it's him so take with a pinch of salt, but just relaying what he said.

And that the manager who knows exactly how to get the best out of him doesn’t get banned (or for too long)