Saint Pete

This is the main bit that probably explains the majority of the £900m quoted, "sponsorship" contracts that were basically a means of City's owners paying massive amounts of money into the club against the rules:- "The independent Commission found that Manchester City arranged ‘sham’ commercial deals with a number of its sponsors during the period, which were part of a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees. The remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club. As part of the scheme, further ‘sham’ arrangements, funded by ADUG, were entered into to enable the club to record lower operating expenses than it actually incurred, as well as a ‘sham’ circular arrangement with Fordham, an entity that purchased the club’s players’ image rights, that was funded by ADUG."

On the face of it, they have to throw the book at them after what they have said there, you can't sweep £900m of artificial income and the advantage that has given them under the carpet surely! But let's see what the Premier League do next and what further legal hurdles City can put in their way. This bit in the PL CEO's statement made me properly laugh though:- “It is a key responsibility of the Premier League to ensure that the Rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the League remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans. We take that role extremely seriously." If that is their responsibility, they have utterly failed in it as they have allowed this situation to continue and completely ruin any notion of fairness and integrity in the competition for a decade!

I think that's quite likely, think with City it was also mentioned there was supposed to be a non disclosure agreement on both sides (obviously not adhered to by someone in that case!), so there may be similar with Tonda until any appeal has been heard.

Portugal leave Ronaldo as unused sub on the bench tonight and lo and behold they beat Norway 2-1 away!

There's that but then why pursue them in the first place and bother to charge them 115 times? I think the Premier League wanted to go after them in this case, but the issue with the big rich clubs is the fear of litigation, which often results in them bottling out of implementing serious penalties on them.

Don't think that's what they want though, they want to be noticed! If anything, might mean they delay their announcement longer now?

BBC has picked it up now, main headline on BBC Sport and BBC news sites.

Yes, right decision to stick with him in my opinion. And I still think a more sensible ban length of say 6 to 8 games (which is still pretty harsh) we could cope with without getting rid, I'm sure the club knew a ban of some sort was more likely than not. If the worst happens and it's a ridiculously long ban, then I guess what happens next will hinge on appeals process and whether he can still continue while we appeal (if we do). Doesn't mean we have handled the situation well in other ways though.

Let's hope our guys are switched on enough to argue it that way if FA start using the Canada precedent and talking 12 months as if that is fair.

If he gets even a 6 month ban, it seems laughably extreme. It could have the EFL thinking they should review their punishment on the club again, as that starts to look lenient in comparison!

Absolutely. You would say we possibly had the best team in our league and one of the best managers in the 2nd half of the season. So why feel the need to take such a big risk? Crazy.

I think you are being naive if you believe that media and public opinion has no impact or influence at all on scenarios like this. We can all argue about whether the EFL punishment in the club was correct and proportionate (quite possibly there is a good argument it was) but the massive OTT furore that blew up around what happened I believe would have at the least emboldened the EFL panel that the option of throwing us out and giving us a points penalty was not going to provoke a furious negative reaction in the media. Think about how it might have played out if it wasn't little old Southampton in the dock but a much bigger fish with more fingers in the media pie. I suspect you would have seen much more public push back about how the offence was quite tinpot and almost comical in comparison to other cheating in the sport, with many useful pundits/ex players etc coming out to pressure the EFL saying it would be a ludicrous overreaction to go as far as expelling us. I'm not saying it would have been right if that had influenced them, but it certainly would have put in their minds that they may face a media backlash afterwards. Why do you think bigger clubs often get more lenient punishments than the smaller ones, it's a combination of PR/influence and the greater fear of litigation from richer clubs. Whether using the media at this late stage could have any impact on the Tonda outcome is another matter, it depends on what is happening today. If today is purely about giving him his punishment, it's too late, but if it's true the final decision's not coming out until later, maybe even after International break, we could still be doing more to push back in media about what a sensible proportionate punishment should look like.

Let's hope this rumour of 6 months is bullshit, would be utterly ludicrous if that's what he gets, but nothing would surprise me at this point. With the bellends coming out again in the press and social media calling for him to be hung, drawn and quartered, I can't help feeling the club should have been far more forthright in the last couple of weeks making a vocal argument that there's no way that severe a punishment would even be on the table if it was a bigger, more "fashionable" club (even a West Ham, Spurs, Leeds, etc).

I don't disagree at all with putting our point of view out there before the final hearing and verdict, and trying to use the press and social media to help us for once. But having decided to do it, he wasn't anywhere near forceful enough and I don't think just saying "don't ban him because it will hurt us more and by the way, we have had lots of legal costs" can be considered coming out fighting. He needed to put much more meat on the bones of why our punishments so far (and by extension further bans on Tonda) should be considered disproportionate in comparison with equivalent or worse wrongdoing by other clubs and individuals, particularly those in bigger clubs. The small vs big clubs disparity I think would have generated more of a debate in the media and potentially more people coming out on our side to pressure the FA a bit, which surely was the aim of doing the interview?

I thought he'd been sidelined when it was Dragan who came out and did the end of season press stuff, but sadly it seems not.