Midfield_General

Agree with you there. Since when have football clubs ever behaved 'with the utmost good faith' towards each other? Diving, timewasting, feigning injury, tapping up, tactical injuries, grappling at corners, pressurising referees, selling assets to themselves and circumventing financial constrictions, illegal payments to agents, poaching players from academies... the entire sport is built on teams trying everything to get an unfair advantage. We've obviously transgressed but the notion of that rule and all the faux moral outrage is comical In a cut-throat, multi-billion industry that rule would have about as much applicable value if it was written as 'Pwomise to always be nice to each other, ok?'

That was tragic bad luck though - this is entirely self-inflicted by the club. Overall, some of the mental gymnastics going on in this thread (not you Nick, just generally) trying to concoct a scenario to justify it just because it's our club who did it is really quite funny. There are rules, we obviously broke them. They've obviously got plenty of evidence of that (the spy in question choosing to hide and change his clothes in a hotel owned by the chairman of the football club he was spying on is hilariously inept - put it all together and they'll have security footage coming out of their ears), and that evidence will be why the EFL charged us pretty much immediately and why by all accounts we're not fighting the charges. The only question now is the story we put forward to try and minimise the punishment. 'Pay off the intern to take the fall and protect the top brass' coming in 3, 2, 1...

I'm sorry what? Who by - Jordan Sibley?

BURN HIM!!!

And in a dramatic plot twist, it turns out Gibbo owns the hotel

Jesus christ You don't declare it in the accounts 🤣 You get a third party to do it, it's not legal And how much you're prepared to accept for the trashing of your reputation is all part of the negotiation. But everyone has their price, and for a young lad straight out of Uni, that price could easily be the equivalent of, say, paying Alex McCarthy's wages for a few months. And almost certainly a drop in the ocean compared to potentially facing sanctions that could cost £200m or whatever it is for promotion. I'm not saying this is definitely the case btw - I know as little as anyone else. I'm just saying it's a standard tactic and I've seen it done several times in other (corporate) environments so it's not some impossible conspiracy theory.

You don't think there are ways and means of paying someone off in secret?

Plausible deniability isn't based on putting forward a theory that sounds likely, it just has to be a scenario which, even if it sounds very far-fetched, could have happened. Everyone knows it's bollocks, but unless you can outright prove it's a lie, it has to remain a possibility, and therefore you don't have to do a mea culpa and just admit everything. It's how OJ Simpson got off and is a standard tactic that's been used by lawyers and politicians forever.

You don't 'ask him to accept the sacking', you cut a deal with him in the background and pay him off in return for taking the fall.

We obviously did it and are just working behind the scenes trying to get our story straight for whatever we figure will be the path of least punishment. The lone wolf story won't get us off completely but would have an element of plausible deniability which will mean Tonda and the seniors can stay clean, and we probably get a hefty fine but that's it. My guess would be that at the moment there is a conversation happening behind the scenes between the club and the analyst in question that goes something along the lines of "you take the fall, come out and say you did it off your own back without the knowledge of any seniors, take a two year ban from football and in return we'll sort you out with a nice fat pay-off that will more than make up for the damage to your reputation. Oh and sign this NDA which means if you ever talk about it to anyone we can sue you." 'Pin it on the intern and pay them off in the background' is the oldest trick in the book, because it usually works. I've seen it done plenty of times when the stakes of coming clean are too high, or someone in management has royally fucked up but is too valuable to lose. There's so much money sloshing around in football that a few hundred grand to take the fall and keep your mouth shut is perfectly plausible. And if he's really a young kid intern fresh out of uni and almost certainly without a pot to piss in, that could work very nicely for all concerned. If I was a betting man, that's how I would bet it will play out. And if I was in charge of trying to handle it, it's what I'd do.

Hi, apoplectic* Boro lurkers 👋 Can I just say that if the reaction of your fanbase to this joke of a story is representative of the way people from Middlesbrough cope with the tribulations of life in general then it’s no wonder that your city and indeed entire region is in such a state of irreversible decline Enjoy the game x (* That means ‘angry’)

Love the clickbait way he’s written that headline - “Behind closed doors move for play-off second leg” - as if it’s a recognised sanction that the authorities might be considering, when in fact the only person ‘moving’ for it is him and the twats he’s riling up online 🤣 Bellend

Can anyone vouch for the whereabouts of @Pilchards yesterday morning? If I remember rightly he was the one who got himself into a position to provide a running text commentary one of Pardew's sessions All I remember is someone being up a tree outside a training ground and lots of talk of Deep Clapping

MANNING TERRITORY

That’s enough now Gavin

PERETZ INJURED!!!!!!! Edit: oh he’s fine

A quick camera pan across the away end would suggest that DHGate have had a strong couple of months

He’s so lucky that all those unstoppable shots we used to face stopped the day Baz left

Woke nonsense

Remember: make sure she lubes your arsehole up first and gives you something to bite down on

Dell-sized mentality As part of the new five year plan the Club World Cup final should be our only priority and we should rest the entire team until then It’s what Cortese would have done

They'd seen the data so they already knew how good he was, they didn't need to actually watch him It was simply a case of persuading him to come Duh

Are those definitely his legs? Bit skinny for a footballer - even a keeper should be chunky of thigh and firm of calf

A match we should aim to lose at all costs?