egg

I didn't claim it was an intellectual measure, but it's undoubtedly an intellectual notch or ten above the idiots who think problems are solved by rioting, and convince themselves that Nige is the saviour of the working man.

Yep, agreed. He's a bloke who doesn't do failure and is giving this the full beans. I approve.

Those were my initial thoughts, but I also wonder if there's now a "fuck it" mindset where we're gonna go all Liebherr in league 1 and sign who we need and get rid of overhang when and if. I'm probably way off, but this is a proper statement if intent which suggests to me that we're going to give promotion a proper go.

We may struggle to shift Baz and Ramsdale, so could see one of them around the first team squad. Hopefully we'll shift both though, and bring in a decent number 2.

That's a cracking bit of business. He's a PL level keeper, and signing on a perm is real a vote of his confidence in us. Nice.

The Reform candidate for Makerfield was on QT last night. I've never seen such an embarrassing performance on the programme. Sadly, many of the people who will vote for him would never watch QT.

I'm not sure where to start with this. We know what was concluded, and that's that Tonda sent people against their wishes to do something wrong. His behaviour was said to be "deplorable". We know that was in a work setting, with an intern, and where there was a significant power imbalance. It's easy to understand why the word bullying could be attached to what happened, but whether that's too strong a word doesn't matter, the facts are clear as day. What takes place in other work places is completely irrelevant.

Put yourself in his shoes. You're a kid, wanting a career, wanting to impress, and hopefully get a job or at least a cracking reference. You know it ain't right, but what do you do? In his shoes, many people would have done what he did - saying you wouldn't is easy to say from behind a keyboard, but that kid was there in reality. Any reasonable tribunal was right to conclude that Tonda's behaviour was deplorable.

There's no "faux outrage" or "virtue signalling" on here. Some people are acknowledging what's happened, and aren't willing to join the cool kids trying to dismiss what's happened, nothing more.

There's no pearl clutching, rather some posters who aren't seeking to push back against conclusions and what's happened. I think he's a lucky lad to still be here.

Nobody would be saying a word about Ballard if we'd got promoted. He was completely unproven in men's football and looked like a league 1 player. We needed proven and were looking at a return to the PL. He was literally leagues away from what we were looking for this season. Now that we're still in the championship, and he did well at Orient, the people with 20/20 hindsight are telling us we should have kept him on the books. The club, however, wanted better (sure, Downs was/is monumentally shit), and were looking at the PL. Moving him in was the correct decision at the time imo.

Yes, but he was an intern. That's a big part of the point. There's a world of difference between peer pressure where it's easy to tell someone to do one, and being the kid who hasn't even got a job yet but wants/needs to impress and do as he's told.

Indeed. Context and nuance is important. There's a massive power imbalance with top down requests to the most junior people, and that can make the pressure feel more coercive. If the pressure is to do something urgent but legitimate, no real issue, but if it's to do something inappropriate or improper (as this was), the boss could be considered to be exploiting someone vulnerable (i.e. interns and juniors) then the pressure may be nudging into bullying territory. Anyways, the decision has been made, findings have been made, and post mortems don't bring things back to life so it's time to move on.

I thought there were witnesses that gave that evidence?

I'm not sure where you're going with this. We saw the footage, and we've seen the judges findings.