hypochondriac

I think we may learn a lot about how confected or otherwise this is if we ever get any cctv footage or a picture of this professional recording equipment. If this does turn out to be a spotty student loitering in a bush with an iphone then we can safely assume that Boro have been playing the media to confect a lot of this and make it appear worse than it is. If however they manage to find the shots of the boom mic, 4K camera and a photo of all the coaching stuff in the command centre during the livestream with Tonda tweaking his tactics board in real time in response to Hellberg's instructions then some of that reporting might have some validity.

It could be like one of those MI5 missions where the agent is working for the big bosses but if anything goes wrong he's on his own, they deny all involvement and the mobile spontaneously combusts.

Win 4-0 then push for the punishment to be a retrospective 3-0 loss in the first leg...

I'd be annoyed about it but I'd be asking the club to use it as fuel to motivate the players to win on the pitch. The fact that many of their fans are so desperate to get us kicked out makes it seem like they don't believe they can beat us on Tuesday.

I can imagine that the same people twisting themselves in knots trying to slightly downplay the cheating would be the ones frothing at the mouth calling for Middlesborough to be expelled from the league if the shoe was on the other foot.

Right but this is a thread about SFC spying on the Middlesborough training ground. If you want to start a thread in the lounge about Steve Gibson and suggestions for how to improve his security at his training ground to prevent rogue actors from spying then go ahead. It's not relevant to this discussion.

And it's not like we took a picture because we liked the look of it. We took surveillance footage to then attempt to use that footage to gain an advantage that we shouldn't have. In other words cheating.

How is that a relevant strand? Just because spying is possibly easier to do at Middlesborough than other places has no relevance here other than the fact that we may have been in even more trouble had we tried to spy somewhere more secure.

If you think about it, Middlesborough should be bunging us a few quid for exposing some holes in their security system.

Interesting idea. Something like Peretz Bree THB Wood Manning Matsuki Jander Downes/Charles Scienza Archer Stewart

Nah. I'm sorry but no one who wasn't a fan of the accused team would be making that argument.

You could argue that the use of professional recording equipment- if that is what it is and not hyperbole- constitutes the same crime as breaking into the training ground. I agree though, if it's just an intern stood near the training ground with a mobile phone and clip on mic and that's the end of the matter then that's a different matter. It's not like Middlesborough is round the corner though, this will have had to have involved a fair bit of planning and logistic to pull off so it appears to be a bit more than being a touch opportunistic.

Indeed. If it was us, no one would be blaming the design of our training ground for making it easier to spy on. The only thing we can hope for is that there is sufficient mitigation or that the club and their lawyers can conjure up sufficient mitigation to restrict the punishment to a fine or a few points taken off next season at worst.

Use a more moderate example if you like. If we've sent someone to go and spy on their training then we are the ones at fault, not the victims who may have a more accessible training ground than others.

Not sure I agree with that. It's akin to someone nicking money from a charity donation bowl and then blaming the shop who left it there for making it easy to steal. Doesn't really make you less of a twat for doing it even if it's easier to do.

I mean it is cheating and someone has cheated- whether everyone at SFC knew about it or not.

The more I think abut it though it's incredibly unlikely that a young intern would be travelling all round the country (if that is what happened) surveilling our opponents with no one knowing. Maybe it was just an opportunistic thing because he was aware that the Boro training ground was exposed.

I agree it's unlikely but an intern wouldn't be like a full time emoyee.

It could be that the analysts direct boss knew but kept it quiet from other people in the club? It probably isn't the first time it's happened. I hope we don't have multiple instances where we've done it. Lots of unknowns at the moment and that imo will determine what the punishment will be.

Maybe you just had this one bright spark analyst who kept coming up with genius ideas for how to counter the opposition every week and no one questioned it? Seems pretty unlikely and much more likely that we did know but are playing down our involvement to try to avoid the most serious consequences but you never know.

I Again. Genuinely not sure how they would be able to. If we win on Tuesday they literally won't have time to expel us and then hear our appeal.

TBF though it wasn't during the bg the playoffs. Personally if I were them I'd just concentrate on beating us on Tuesday then none of this matters for them.

Not sure there is. If I had to put money on it then if we are actually bang to rights I think a points deduction and big fine is the most likely outcome.

You don't think someone would uncover a massive payment to the intern and not infer obvious guilt from that?

He's always been a grade A cunt. I hope we win and play the pantomime villain for the rest of this thing. Fuck it and fuck them.