Midfield_General

Quite. And how long do they wait before they play it? Until the appeal process plays out? How long does that take? What if the appeal gets escalated to the courts, gets stuck and we get to August without a resolution? Do they delay the start of the season too? They may be trying to pretend it's an option to use it as negotiation leverage, but there is not a single chance in hell that the final gets moved. Not one.

Ok, son top of all the other reasons, apparently Wembley will also now just hand over the game which is personally worth £8m to them, to another venue. Presuming this is from some claimed ITK status? Or just stirring with no substantiation whatsoever and conflicting with what the Mirror is saying about the day the panel sits? Care to elaborate, or just looking for bites? (in which case, doh, well done)

According to...?

Well if that article's correct (and I appreciate it's the Mirror) then we're not getting kicked out. That article clearly states that if they do try and kick us out then we will immediately appeal it, and triggering that process alone would mean that the final couldn't be played and they'd have to move it. There's no way the final is going to be moved, it's not logistically possible — ergo, we're not getting kicked out. I suspect that there is some frantic backchannel negotiation going on behind the scenes where we agree to take a monster fine, possibly a points deduction and to pay some compensation to Boro to shut Gibson up, and in return they confirm that we'll not be removed so that any talk of the final being moved goes away, tickets can be issued as planned on Friday and everyone can get on with preparing for it (except Boro of course). Everyone comes away from that sort of happy and the logistical issues go away. If so, we've played our hand quite well because we have the right to 14 days, and the longer we force this mess to drag on, the more unmanageable it is for the EFL, Wembley, the police etc. They'll just want it sorted so they can play the game.

Hang on - are we on an unbeaten run? That's news to me. I guess no-one saw that coming, or they would have mentioned it since.

Nostrils Eyelashes Ears Herpes

Can't remember where I read it now, but someone said that Corden weighing in has the vibe of that person in the office who never watches football and knows nothing about it but who suddenly develops an extremely strong opinion on one particular issue. For the record, the obese waitress-abuser's proposal was that if Saints go up, we should have to give 50% of next season's TV money to Middlesbrough. Or to put it another way, a fine equating to approximately £75,000,000.

100, it would seem They've lost their collective minds They're whipping themselves into such a frenzy over every made-up rumour and scrap of twitter bullshit, they're like those people who believed Alex Jones when he told them that pesticides made their frogs gay, except they all look like Phil Stamp (and that's just the women)

Gibson literally phoned him while he was on air It's not exactly subtle behind-the-scenes stuff

Well obviously

https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/ticket-sales-windows-announced-for-play-off-final Tickets available to buy from 9.30am Friday. Presumably the panel will be convened and will sit, hear all the available evidence from both sides and give its verdict in the next 24h then to avoid the utter shitshow of Wembley selling 40,000 tickets for a game that's not going to take place?

Cool. Looking forward to seeing the proof of that then.

Even the Boro forums think 'Diggerlad' is a total and utter knob with the lies he makes up - go on FTTM, they think he's an embarassment, and bearing in mind what absolute melts they are in general, that is saying something

Professional troll The destitute man's Adrian Durham

Gosh, that's an interesting and completely innocent question and first post from someone who joined the forum yesterday

He should put a very strongly worded review on TripAdvisor

So he was using an iphone. From 150m away. You can barely zoom in 10m on an iphone. And a standard iphone mic would pick up no audio whatsoever apart from the chaffinches in the branches directly above his head. So unless the chaffinches were discussing set plays and Hayden Hackney's fitness prognosis, there would be nothing of value on that device whatsoever. So by all means do him for trying to film when he shouldn't have, but the idea that we actually gained any advantage from it is absurd.

It doesn't prove spying though, which is what they need to prove if they're seriously trying to get us kicked out. Nowhere near it. There aren't any rules about staff not being allowed in the same town as their opponents before a game. How are we supposed to have gained an advantage in a game of football from someone buying a cup of coffee?

Also, regarding a 'paper trail', me being in the city of Wrexham and buying a coffee doesn't in any way prove I spied on the Wrexham football team while I was there, regardless of anything I may or may not have done elsewhere. All it proves is that I bought a coffee. Unless I bought it in the cafe at the Wrexham training ground while I was hiding there illegally, anything else is purely circumstantial and means absolutely nothing

Alfie House reported that we are unlikely to, and with his links to the club I would think that he's getting fairly strong intel if not being briefed directly: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/26093665.southampton-unlikely-deny-efl-charge-spying-disciplinary/ But you are right - on a re-read it is 'not expected to', rather than 'have confirmed'. Fair dos.

If that is genuinely the incident that Boro are banking on as grounds for expulsion, then they will be laughed out of the panel. That's the 'professional recording equipment' is it? Absolutely comical. Just give us the fine and let those poor Boro players go on holiday, they looked tired enough after 60 minutes as it was

Joking aside, great post. Thanks for going to the effort of reasoning it out and sharing it.

So in summary: pin it on the intern and we're golden 👍

True, but the point of the enquiry isn't a black or white 'did you do it or didn't you?'. We've already said we're not contesting the charges which is us saying 'yes, we had someone there, we're not denying that'. The crux of it is all in the detail — what exactly happened, who it was, what their role was, whether they were they acting alone or briefed to do it by senior management, when exactly it took place, whether it was a one-off or systematic, what they actually got, how much effort they went to to obtain it, how useful what they got was, whether it materially influenced results, if so how many and which ones, etc etc. Their side are using the media to try to paint a picture of large-scale, systematic, cynical cheating. Our side will be trying to play it down as 'oh come on, it's really easy to do and everyone does it — it was just an overzealous kid taking advantage of the fact that anyone can see straight onto their training pitch from the road'. Personally, I think clips like the Sky one are far more supportive of the latter, and judging from the comments under the video it seems that most people who have watched it, many of whom are neutral, feel the same. Small details become very important in cases like this which aren't 'did it happen' but are instead 'what exactly happened and how bad was it'. Personally, I suspect the reality is somewhere in the middle, but as with all legal cases like this it's not what anyone thinks happened, it's what can be proved, and then it's down to the panel to decide how egregious or otherwise they think that behaviour was and what a fitting punishment should be. Small details really matter in that scenario.

Nonsense. There's a world of difference between breaking in somewhere, trespassing on private land etc and standing where any man on the street can stand and watching something that is in full public view. It won't get anyone off, but it is obviously relevant. Lawyers use details like that all the time to provide mitigation and get punishments reduced. It's basically what they're paid to do.