Midfield_General

Parsons set to be fired at 18.03 once they return the verdict

Well, maybe Wolves

Not just the players. Once the appeal gets thrown out I think heads will start to roll. Between sackings and resignations / 'get me the fuck out of here' calls to agents, I can see it being a top to bottom bloodbath: CEO, DoF, Manager, Analytics team, lots of the playing staff. Would Dragan have the stomach to carry on after this, with the requirement of pumping in millions more just to stand still, with chaos to sort out, absolutely no guarantee of any return and the parachute payments running out after this season? If I was him, once I'd finished firing Parsons I'd be getting on the phone to see if anyone wants to buy a football club for a very reasonable price. Comes with a lovely* training ground. Legal background an advantage. (* and very private)

Yeah if that's all he's got then they should chuck a few extra points on the deduction for wasting their fucking time

Yup. I think you've nailed it.

Wow, we've volunteered to be part of a working group. Take that, Gibbo! There's a new boss in town!!!! Fucking mug

Precisely. Apparently Johnny Cochrane should have just said 'Yeah, he obviously did it so there's no point pretending otherwise, it's a fair cop' as his client had 40,000 volts put through him.

You don't seem to understand the basic premise that that is basically exactly what defence lawyers are paid millions to do. They find ways to get people off, or if they can't get them off, to find ways to get their punishment reduced. That's the whole point of having a defence lawyer. Which they do successfully, a lot of the time. Hence why the good ones are so ridiculously well-paid and in-demand. Unless of course their client is a complete fucking idiot who admits to everything before the defence lawyer has had the chance to get their coat off. Like - oooh, I don't know - Phil Parsons.

If Borough end up getting promoted then Gibbo has played an absolute fucking blinder, to be fair to him Don't get me wrong, he's a conniving little cunt but he's demonstrated a mastery of strategy, opportunism, execution, manipulation and influence that our vacuum cleaner salesman and his bunch of clowns could only dream of. He has absolutely run rings round everyone in this, so far. Our board, the EFL, the panel, the media — everyone.

Whilst Parsons added in mitigation 'but we're really sorry so let us off your honour, please'

'Ted were proper Bo, our Kes'

Just looked it up and apparently it's The Right Honorable Mr Justice Westwood. Anyone know if he's any good?

Mine's a pint of wine, in honour of our next manager

Yeah, it's hard to see how his position is in any way tenable after this. He's done, surely. The players have worked their arses off and in the cases of those who took a 40% pay cut on relegation, which would have been reinstated if we got promoted again, have just seen millions in potential wages go up in smoke because of the actions of whoever was involved in the spying. Hence they are now considering their own legal action against the club for loss of earnings, if the media reports are to be believed: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/19/southampton-kicked-out-of-championship-playoff-final-docked-four-points-for-spying What a sorry state of affairs

Player manager 👍

Yes, I realise that. But in some legal cases, even though people have done things they shouldn't have, they keep quiet and then hire lawyers who build cases to - gasp - try and make it seem better than it is in order to get the punishment reduced. They don't stride up to the specific person who has a £200m personal interest in prosecuting them and say 'Look, between you and me, we did it, but don't worry, we're handling it' in front of a room full of people, before their legal team has had the chance to lead on it, and then expect it to go well. There's a reason lawyers always instruct their clients to say 'no comment' to everything even when all the evidence overwhelmingly suggests they did it.

Because that fucking idiot Parsons thought that if he just said 'OK, you got us, we did it' and didn't bother defending it then everyone would think he was such a super chap for the being so honest that the punishment wouldn't be so bad

I regret to inform you that while you've been away it's been decided that it's all your fault and you owe us all £250 billion and a free hand job to Steve Gibson You have until 1pm to appeal or else it's time to get crankin'

I wonder at what stage everyone internally at the club realises they/ we're fucked and the blame game starts as they all start turning on each other in an attempt to save their own skins I'm going for tomorrow morning Dragan vs. Exec (Parsons) vs. Management team (Tonda and team) vs. Head of Analytics (whoever the fuck) vs. wee Will Salt the lone wolf in a blame game Battle Royale Who will survive?

Go on then - what's the Big Picture that we should all be seeing? Is it related to Chem trails? 5G masts? Is Phil Parsons turning our frogs gay?

BREAKING: "Eric Black admits 'it was me'"

Quite. There is a world of difference between 'We only did it three times' and 'Only three clubs have come forward with hard, incontrovertible evidence that we did it to them'. There is not a chance that we spied on Oxford in January and then didn't do it again until Ipswich in April. It seems pretty obvious at this point that it was a systematic, cultural thing and everyone involved thought it was terribly clever and a jolly good laugh (hence the story about swapping internal emails joking about how they were doing it). The only reason that only those three games are being focused on are because those are the games where they got caught red-handed. It seems very likely that we were doing it the rest of the time as well, it's just that those clubs didn't catch us.

Venky's

Gavin Bazunu, QC