Saints Expelled from Playoffs

[Disco Stu]

Genius by the club to be fair. Nobody's talking about the 9 Nils now are they? And our global exposure is the best it's ever been!

[Osvaldorama]

30 minutes ago, S-Clarke said:

I think the biggest gripe here is that this game has been decided off the pitch, Hull fans believe the same. What we did was stupid, we are totally guilty, bang to rights, utter morons. But equally, the orchestrated media campaign by Boro to expose this has been just as murky, dirty and certainly not 'in good faith'.

Boro felt wronged, I get that, totally. But they had 2 games to put that right on the football pitch, and this is football at the end of the day. They couldn't put it right on the football pitch, so they went nuclear off the pitch and beat us off of it instead. In essence, they had 4 legs to beat us - not 2.

The issue with the result is that it seems to have purely favoured Middlesborough, not sporting integrity or fans. Just what Middlesborough wanted. It wasn't just Boro we had done this to, but they've used it in a way so they get the maximum reward for the fallout and in the same throw penalise Hull, Wrexham and Derby to a degree.

The EFL have handled this terribly from the start, but my feeling is that they decided on expulsion the moment Boro cried to them, and it was up to us to convince them otherwise - but once the Boro media machine got going, we were KO and couldn't even get back up to mount a defence. 

Ultimately, our intention was to see if Hackney was playing (he didn’t)

…And they caught the spy before he saw anything. 

So how did it deserve such a harsh punishment? It didn’t materially affect the game in any way. 
 

It’s all from Boro blowing it out of proportion. 

Edited 6 hours ago by Osvaldorama

[Saint86]

4 minutes ago, saintant said:

Any thoughts on why Bielsa wasn't suspended from football by the FA or EFL for brazenly admitting to spying on teams prior to every game? Not saying anything you mention is incorrect but what about covering the double standards? Or aren't we allowed to fight our corner?

The EFL, media, and other clubs smell blood and will want saints to be as weak as possible so that they can keep making hay themselves. So obviously to appease all of those parties, our parsons-esq section of fans will happily prostrate themselves before all an sundry in the hope that they'll stop saying hurty words and start being nice to saints again (albeit when we're in turmoil and plummeting down the football league).

Edited 6 hours ago by Saint86

[saintant]

1 hour ago, Hussar Saint said:

With any luck Spurs will get relegated on Sunday and I’ll be able to turn the TV on without seeing some reference to this total fucking shit show!

Nah. Don't like Spurs but West Ham for me since Fatty Corden stuck his nose into our business.

[SW11_Saint]

On 21/05/2026 at 05:46, Doctoroncall said:

If Priestman got 12 months ban, how long for Tonda?  18 or 24 months considering the punishment the club got?

12-18 months I reckon.

[RedArmy]

31 minutes ago, Saint86 said:

 

It effectively implies that Boro knew who he was and that he'd be there (presumably from from the "whistleblower" (presumably Jason Taylor?)), and that their "media team" was there, ready and waiting with high powered photography equipment to get a snap of him. Which means we were never gaining anything from scouting that training session, and that Boro weren't therefore disadvantaged in the semi final 

Yeah I find it very hard to believe that if they had prior knowledge and were ready and waiting that they allowed him to be there long enough to gain any valuable knowledge. 
 

Either that or they purposefully trained a different system that day/morning/afternoon allowed Salt to gather that information before challenging him so that information was already fed back to Tonda to set up a game plan and then got back to training how they were really going to set up. 
Which would explain how we looked so clueless in that first half. 

[Hopper]

1 minute ago, Osvaldorama said:

Ultimately, our intention was to see if Hackney was playing (he didn’t)

 

and they caught him before he saw anything. 

So how did it deserve such a harsh punishment? It didn’t materially affect the game in any way. 
 

It’s all from Boro blowing it out of proportion. 

We've admitted to spying 3 times. You can be sure it happened many more than that.

[Lighthouse]

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

[trousers]

6 minutes ago, saintant said:

Any thoughts on why Bielsa wasn't suspended from football by the FA or EFL for brazenly admitting to spying on teams prior to every game? Not saying anything you mention is incorrect but what about covering the double standards? Or aren't we allowed to fight our corner?

It's almost as if some posters put their 'moral superiority' over the natural instinct of a supporter to be inquisitive and/or sceptical about the wider context. (And, yes, of course there's an element of bias and/or 'Saints tinted glasses' in this, but show me a football fan that isn't biased towards their club in some shape or form... Unless you're trying to look 'clever' on a football forum of course... )

Edited 6 hours ago by trousers

[Osvaldorama]

Just now, Lighthouse said:

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

Probably; their IQs are likely low enough that they can’t hold two coherent sides to an argument in their mind at the same time. 
 

For us normal people, we can have a discussion about how saints were in th wrong, but it wasn’t that bad, then Boro used it against us. 

[saintant]

1 hour ago, egg said:

So what's the complaint? That's a bit like complaining that a cop was parked around the corner cos he was tipped off about a drink driver by a bloke who'd bought said driver a few beers. 

Not at all because, unlike Boro, the cop has nothing personal to gain. He's merely doing his job to keep drunk drivers off the street.

[Hopper]

If the shoe was on the other foot and we thought or knew Boro were spying, you can be sure we'd have taken the same course of action they did.

It's on us. We cheated we paid the price. Now get the fucks out who signed off on it and let's rebuild... again.

[RedArmy]

5 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

This is a forum, where you discuss things. 
 

More than one thing in this situation can be true, and one doesn’t detract from the other. 
 

1) we cheated, systemically 

2) we’re fucking stupid 

3) we handled the fallout horrifically

4) we potentially walked into a perfectly laid trap (of our own doing) 

5) Boro played a blinder giving themselves a guaranteed route to Wembley win or lose. 

[saintant]

1 hour ago, egg said:

The theory takes us nowhere though and is pointless. Boro were / are cunts, but whether we were baited or not, we bit. 

Ah, I get it. That makes me feel a lot better. If they did it, no big deal despite what it has achieved for them. Fair enough.

[LordHester]

12 minutes ago, Osvaldorama said:

Ultimately, our intention was to see if Hackney was playing (he didn’t)

Why would they have taken recording equipment if that was the only aim?

[Football Special]

9 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

You're a wind up merchant, for some reason deliberately acting stupid

Middlesbrough fans will be well aware of how their club has manipulated the situation to gain maximum advantage, clever but dirty tricks still. 

Of all the lawyers in the world they just happened to have one of played for Boro and one who'd represented Boro on the panel. 

Its perfectly reasonable for Saints fans to see the club were stupid and shouldn't have spied (primary cause) but that we've also been stitched up with the process and punishment 

 

[Oldandtired]

The moral outrage on here has given me a much-needed smile, people falling over themselves to express their indignation about 'cheating'. 
 

Two or three weeks ago those same people would have been cheering their heads off if THB (or insert your favourite clogger's name here) had kicked an opposing forward into row z as he burst forward onto our goal, or Leo had gone sprawling in their penalty area with just the slightest touch to try and gain a pen. 
 

It's all cheating, so it smacks of hypocrisy to try and take the moral high ground over this.

[Saint Since '51]

Middlesborough knowing that there had been an incident involving Oxford on 7th May - the same day that we spied on them - is a striking revelation in the Disciplinary Panel's written report. It is difficult to explain.

It would be interesting to know - from a reliable named source - how they came by that information. Not knowing how they knew has fuelled conspiracy theories which speculate that they knew about Oxford before May 7th and set a trap for us.

Just for clarity, there are two aspects of this mystery which are being misrepresented by some posts above.

1. The written report says "MFC were made aware of this (the Oxford incident) on 7th May ..." It doesn't say how they knew or what time they 'were made aware' but it does suggest that they did not know before 7th May. 
2. Knowledge of our spying on Middlesborough was in the public realm from late afternoon on 7th May. [I've seen a Mail Online post timed at 5.47pm].

I'm not saying that the conspiracy theories are right or wrong, only that it is quite possible that someone inside or outside MFC told them about the Oxford incident after our spying became common knowledge. 

[saintant]

50 minutes ago, Saint86 said:

I'm not wanting to go down the rabbit hole too far, but I do think labelling it as just "suspicions" is being very very kind to Boro.

According to the official report. The same day they first encountered and caught/snapped salt, they also had evidence of him (someone the were yet to encounter) being at Oxford united months earlier in December.

So for this to be fully innocent and as it seems - boro had evidence of a junior intern/analyst (that they were yet to encounter, didn't know, and had to go through a process of id'ing) being at another clubs training ground on the very same day that they encountered him, (and before they even knew who he was). See points 15-17 of the report. 

This is before they allegedly tracked his banking card, before parsons went to Gibson and admitted anything etc.

To be true, they would have had to have id'd salt first themselves, then written to all clubs including Oxford, gotten Oxford to track back through their own CCTV from 4months earlier to find someone that looked like salt from the Boro image, and successfully identified Salt and provided that evidence back to Boro for them to present the evidence to the efl - all in a matter of hours on the afternoon / evening of the Thursday 7th. All of which was before this story broke and was in the media etc.

I would say that sequence of dates/timings is very unlikely and looks like a smoking gun which hull could potentially use - i.e., would it stand up to a legal scrutiny if Boro were required to supply evidence / messages etc. (in the same way that saints were as part of this charge).

It effectively implies that Boro knew who he was and that he'd be there (presumably from from the "whistleblower" (presumably Jason Taylor?)), and that their "media team" was there, ready and waiting with high powered photography equipment to get a snap of him. Which means we were never gaining anything from scouting that training session, and that Boro weren't therefore disadvantaged in the semi final - i.e., result should stand. Hull should be promoted or we should have played the final - but with a hefty fine and -4 points.

Sadly, I think Boro will get away with all of this and likely get promoted. But the reality is they really do look to have used saints' indiscretions as their own extra life in the playoffs.

Nothing in that excuses us for being idiots and illegally scouting clubs training sessions for an advantage, but the punishment we've received is well OTT... sadly Parsons and co. have committed suicide for the club after the fact on that front.

You can probably make the case that Boro being pre-prepared for all of this is part of why their media campaign was so effective as well. They have absolutely hammered saints off the pitch. Parson heading us up was like sending a lamb into the lions dens.

Good stuff but you'll just be accused of being a mad conspiracy theorist because we are the bad boys in this and, Boro, led by Gibbo, are squeaky clean and how dare we try to fight our corner by raising some clear anomalies in how this unfolded.

[trousers]

16 minutes ago, Hopper said:

If the shoe was on the other foot and we thought or knew Boro were spying, you can be sure we'd have taken the same course of action they did.
 

Given the ineptitude of our leadership, I admire your confidence in their ability to have done what Gibson and co did! I'd put a sizeable wedge on us also f***ing things up had the boot was on the other foot... 

Edited 6 hours ago by trousers

[Scully]

22 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

Isn't a better anecdote that the burglar is being given a 20 years sentence instead of an earlier burglar being given 6 months? Not a debate whether or not the burglar is guilty or not.

[trousers]

7 minutes ago, Saint Since '51 said:

Middlesborough knowing that there had been an incident involving Oxford on 7th May - the same day that we spied on them - is a striking revelation in the Disciplinary Panel's written report. It is difficult to explain.

It would be interesting to know - from a reliable named source - how they came by that information. Not knowing how they knew has fuelled conspiracy theories which speculate that they knew about Oxford before May 7th and set a trap for us.

One word: "Whistleblower"...

[tdmickey3]

23 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Just so you know, if there are any Boro fans still reading this forum (or skates for that matter) they're probably laughing their tits off at this thread. The complaints about the panel were bad enough. Now we've got the football equivalent of a burglar being arrested and saying, "it's not fair! the shop next door warned them that they had a break in last week, so they put up cameras deliberately to try and catch me out. They haven't acted in good faith!"

We cheated, we got caught, we got kicked out. Suck it up.

Some truth in that but the fact remains, the punishment was ridiculously harsh and everyone knows it but wont admit it 

[Colinjb]

Non uniform day at our school. Last one we did, a nice number of Saints shirts.

Not one today. The kids don't want the grief.

[trousers]

Just now, Colinjb said:

Non uniform day at our school. Last one we did, a nice number of Saints shirts.

Not one today. The kids don't want the grief.

Anyone in camo gear though...?

[saintant]

25 minutes ago, SW11_Saint said:

12-18 months I reckon.

Nah, Bielsa should be the bench mark here. The way he was dealt with set the precedent. Case against Eckert dismissed.

[gio1saints]

Good Morning. 

One of the lines in Parsobs statement made me wonder if this is just the beginning of a whole clusterfuck of similar cases about to be brought up by Championship clubs who believe they’ve been spied on. 
 

Parsons comment about proactive support in the matter bears more than a slight inference that it’s going on and others are at it - but not been caught and punished- not yet anyway. 
 

poetic justice would find that Boro did it earlier in the season to, say, Derby or Wrexham. 
 

I just get the impression that there’s a whole load of intern analysts ( spies) who could spill the beans at some point about what goes on. And the media will have a field day about the most corrupt league in the world! 

 

[tdmickey3]

13 minutes ago, Football Special said:

You're a wind up merchant, for some reason deliberately acting stupid

Middlesbrough fans will be well aware of how their club has manipulated the situation to gain maximum advantage, clever but dirty tricks still. 

Of all the lawyers in the world they just happened to have one of played for Boro and one who'd represented Boro on the panel. 

Its perfectly reasonable for Saints fans to see the club were stupid and shouldn't have spied (primary cause) but that we've also been stitched up with the process and punishment 

 

Yep, funny how no attention to this bias has been shown by the rabid media and the like.

Stinks

[Lord Duckhunter]

24 minutes ago, Osvaldorama said:

Ultimately, our intention was to see if Hackney was playing (he didn’t)

…And they caught the spy before he saw anything. 

That’s only what the club claimed. We admitted we lied earlier in the process & spied on other clubs to find out their formations. Personally I don’t believe that was the only reason we went up there, anymore than I believe Oxford & Ipswich were the only other 2 instances. Bielsa did a full briefing on why he did it, what he hoped to achieve by doing it, and the advantages it gave him. Tonda admitted he did it to gain a sporting advantage, yet some of our supporters are still banging on about no advantage gained. As the hearing said, that’s irrelevant. Its advantage sought not gained that mattered. 

[Winnersaint]

2 minutes ago, trousers said:

Anyone in camo gear though...?

or All Ghillied Up!

[benjii]

55 minutes ago, so22saint said:

On this point, I've worked with a number of football clubs and they are *unbelievably* amateur in their set up for companies that do 100s of millions of £.  This is because the TV money creates a false external view that they'll be as professional as a "normal" company of that size whereas in reality most of that money flows straight to the players and football has traditionally been a family run business with family run levels of corporate professionalism.

Man U, City and Spurs were very on it when I worked with them.  Liverpool much more old school (it was just pre-Klopp, they made me have a photo under Mané's shirt -ha ha wankers), and I'd imagine my beloved Saints are worse than that.

Till I leave this CEO job and take Parsons 😂 

Very true.

Their public profile is completely out of whack with their size of business and organisational competence, often.

[tdmickey3]

Just now, Lord Duckhunter said:

That’s only what the club claimed. We admitted we lied earlier in the process & spied on other clubs to find out their formations. Personally I don’t believe that was the only reason we went up there, anymore than I believe Oxford & Ipswich were the only other 2 instances. Bielsa did a full briefing on why he did it, what he hoped to achieve by doing it, and the advantages it gave him. Tonda admitted he did it to gain a sporting advantage, yet some of our supporters are still banging on about no advantage gained. As the hearing said, that’s irrelevant. Its advantage sought not gained that mattered. 

Blah blah blah

[Lord Duckhunter]

27 minutes ago, Osvaldorama said:

For us normal people,

🤣🤣🤣🤣

The reaction in here is anything but normal, it’s unhinged. 

[sadoldgit]

Some thoughts now the dust has started to settle.

1. I can’t believe that something as innocuous as checking out the opposition before a match has been blown up to be the sporting crime of the century.

2. How such a minor infringement of such a stupid rule has led to not only expulsion from a major game but the utter turmoil within SFC.

3. The club could not have handled the situation any worse than they have done and have been played by Gibson like a cheap fiddle.

4. We now live in an age where the answer to everything is to sack everyone in sight as if that is the answer to all of our problems rather than rehabilitation and education to change behaviour.

[Lighthouse]

6 minutes ago, Scully said:

Isn't a better anecdote that the burglar is being given a 20 years sentence instead of an earlier burglar being given 6 months? Not a debate whether or not the burglar is guilty or not.

How have we been given a '20 year sentence'? We've been disqualified from a game we cheated in, we can still compete in next years Championship. What's happening here is a burglar has been caught stealing a million pounds in cash and some people are bizarrely trying to argue that he should get to keep the million pounds and pay a fine of £100k.

 

Put it this way, if we were in this same scenario where Pompey had beaten us in the semi. I'm absolutely certain that everybody on this forum would definitely be saying, "oh don't kick Pompey out, that's way too harsh, let them play in the final."

[MB]

Will be the biggest sporting injustice of all time if Boro are promoted tomorrow. We were stupid yes, but Boro’s tactics are incomprehensible and we responded with a legal defence a 5 year old could have put together.

 

 

[tdmickey3]

Just now, Lighthouse said:

How have we been given a '20 year sentence'? We've been disqualified from a game we cheated in, we can still compete in next years Championship.

 

What's happening here is a burglar has been caught stealing a million pounds in cash and some people are bizarrely trying to argue that he should get to keep the million pounds and pay a fine of £100k.

The punishment we have received is like giving a jay walker a jail sentance

[saintant]

14 minutes ago, Saint Since '51 said:

Middlesborough knowing that there had been an incident involving Oxford on 7th May - the same day that we spied on them - is a striking revelation in the Disciplinary Panel's written report. It is difficult to explain.

It would be interesting to know - from a reliable named source - how they came by that information. Not knowing how they knew has fuelled conspiracy theories which speculate that they knew about Oxford before May 7th and set a trap for us.

Just for clarity, there are two aspects of this mystery which are being misrepresented by some posts above.

1. The written report says "MFC were made aware of this (the Oxford incident) on 7th May ..." It doesn't say how they knew or what time they 'were made aware' but it does suggest that they did not know before 7th May. 
2. Knowledge of our spying on Middlesborough was in the public realm from late afternoon on 7th May. [I've seen a Mail Online post timed at 5.47pm].

I'm not saying that the conspiracy theories are right or wrong, only that it is quite possible that someone inside or outside MFC told them about the Oxford incident after our spying became common knowledge. 

Over to those who are 100% sure Boro have played with a straight bat in all this. Let's have some comments.

[Ekelund24]

1 hour ago, Sheaf Saint said:

Yes it's been highlighted before and is now key to the whole entrapment theory. Boro had seemingly been fed their evidence of us doing it to multiple clubs before Salt turned up at Rockcliffe. 

I thought that might be the case and others would've spotted it. It is clearly obvious from the reports although it is a bit strange that the report states in it's opening section that the Oxford incident occurred on the 23rd Dec and the KO on the 26th was 3pm, do any football clubs train after 1pm? Later it says the person was there on the 24th which we must've admitted!! It also looks like the severity of the punishment was justified by including the Oxford and Ipswich incidents but they were then punished separately. It is clear the whole process was rushed for the final to take place and you could argue that this grab for money undermines public confidence in the morals of the EFL to stage the "Biggest game in Football" above the correct legal procedure.

However, we lied about doing it before then admitted we did it, we tried to claim that we didn't gain a sporting advantage when we probably did although we could've read the fucking papers to know Hackney wasn't playing. We used the wrong legal precedent in the Leeds case as it was committed before the rule and would be used to justify the existence of the rule. Also, letting Eckert say I didn't know it was against the rules is stupid and shows there is no culture of leadership or understanding.

[trousers]

Just now, saintant said:

Nah, Bielsa should be the bench mark here. The way he was dealt with set the precedent. Case against Eckert dismissed.

I agree. People's argument for him getting an FA sanction, when Bielsa didn't, seems to be: "Well, the EFL have a new rule"... But, surely, if the FA were to follow due process (no sniggering at the back!) then what the EFL (or any football association they oversee) have in their rulebook shouldn't influence how the FA consider the matter. Surely the FA have their own 'rulebook' to guide them on this, and if the rules in said FA rulebook haven't changed in this area since 2019, then they're duty bound to treat Eckert and Bielsa the same, aren't they? (In fact, in terms of what has been admitted to and/or is known so far, Bielsa committed much more indiscretions than Eckert)

[Lord Duckhunter]

7 minutes ago, tdmickey3 said:

Some truth in that but the fact remains, the punishment was ridiculously harsh and everyone knows it but wont admit it 

So what do you think the punishment should have been once the panel decided the play offs were a separate competition & a sporting sanction was appropriate. We seem to have used footballs top lawyer on our appeal,  and he couldn’t get anywhere.  

[saintant]

5 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

🤣🤣🤣🤣

The reaction in here is anything but normal, it’s unhinged. 

Speak for yourself.

[trousers]

6 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

🤣🤣🤣🤣

The reaction in here is anything but normal, it’s unhinged. 

 

[saintant]

6 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

How have we been given a '20 year sentence'? We've been disqualified from a game we cheated in, we can still compete in next years Championship. What's happening here is a burglar has been caught stealing a million pounds in cash and some people are bizarrely trying to argue that he should get to keep the million pounds and pay a fine of £100k.

 

Put it this way, if we were in this same scenario where Pompey had beaten us in the semi. I'm absolutely certain that everybody on this forum would definitely be saying, "oh don't kick Pompey out, that's way too harsh, let them play in the final."

And the fact that Boro knew about us spying on Oxford on the same day they nabbed our spy? Do you have a view on that to maybe fight the club's corner in all this?

[Hopper]

7 minutes ago, sadoldgit said:

4. We now live in an age where the answer to everything is to sack everyone in sight as if that is the answer to all of our problems rather than rehabilitation and education to change behaviour.

There's no world where he hasn't completely lost the dressing room. There will be multiple players who had contract clauses and bonuses missed. The opportunity to play in the Premier League gone.

[Lord Duckhunter]

8 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

Put it this way, if we were in this same scenario where Pompey had beaten us in the semi. I'm absolutely certain that everybody on this forum would definitely be saying, "oh don't kick Pompey out, that's way too harsh, let them play in the final."

What would they be saying if the roles were reversed & Boro beat us after spying. Put Hull through 🤣🤣🤣

[Scummer]

2 minutes ago, Lord Duckhunter said:

So what do you think the punishment should have been once the panel decided the play offs were a separate competition & a sporting sanction was appropriate. We seem to have used footballs top lawyer on our appeal,  and he couldn’t get anywhere.  

They should have postponed the semi final as soon as the complaint went in. Then they could have either kicked us out or awarded the first leg as a 3-0 win to Boro (do two legged ties count as one match or two?). They wasted a lot of people's time and money with how they went about this.

[lambtiss]

The whole episode has been a complete embarrassment and we deserve better. We will live with the fallout for a long time. 

However, after a few days of stewing I've decided that I was born a Saint and will always be a Saint. 

Whoever runs out in August in a Saints shirt will get my full support as a fan. 

COYRs

[saintant]

7 minutes ago, trousers said:

I agree. People's argument for him getting an FA sanction, when Bielsa didn't, seems to be: "Well, the EFL have a new rule"... But, surely, if the FA were to follow due process (no sniggering at the back!) then what the EFL (or any football association they oversee) have in their rulebook shouldn't influence how the FA consider the matter. Surely the FA have their own 'rulebook' to guide them on this, and if the rules in said FA rulebook haven't changed in this area since 2019, then they're duty bound to treat Eckert and Bielsa the same, aren't they? (In fact, in terms of what has been admitted to and/or is known so far, Bielsa committed much more indiscretions than Eckert)

No place for common sense and standing up for our club on this forum. You'll be shot down quicker than a Sutkka bomber over London in 1940. Just accept we are the bad boys and the worst of the worst.

[RedArmy]

10 minutes ago, Lighthouse said:

 

 

Put it this way, if we were in this same scenario where Pompey had beaten us in the semi. I'm absolutely certain that everybody on this forum would definitely be saying, "oh don't kick Pompey out, that's way too harsh, let them play in the final."

They could wear the wrong colour socks and I’d want them cunts kicked out. Irrelevant.