Dman

Yep. I saw a handful of them online yesterday trying to convince themselves that if we go on to win the play-offs, we have commited fraud.

Complaint has been lodged with the EFL. Getting a load of jurnos to write up about their demands, feeding a frenzy of cry babies going online wont change that. Genuinely, i'd be more ashamed of my club for the way they have dealt with it than I am the fact we done it.

Is this real? I'd genuinely consider banning them from St Mary's if so. They way they have handled this is embarrassing and boarding on unprofessional.

I've seen so many of them saying stupid things like "the whole of the footballing world want us to win now" From what I've seen, other than press in the north east, former players, fans and 'the voice of reason' Troy Deeney noone else really seems to care all that much.

we do...

reckon there is very little chance of them selling anyone to us in the near future 😃

excluding all of the spy drama - did anyone else notice the weird siren they had going on when Peretz took a goal kick. I thought the skate bell was annoying... how on earth could you sit next to that each week.

A shame really. There is noway someone who's been out for as long as he has would be 'match fit' in such an occasion.

what a daft thing to think.

if its on the public pavement off the the clubs property, how can they be held accountable?

Which, if I haven't been clear, is my point.

The EFL know better than to mess with Steve 'el chapo' Gibson. (as derby found out when he tried to claim for 40m and wound up with about 3m. NEVER MESS WITH STEVE GIBSON)

I'm told its an adapted version. Peretz brought it from his former IDF days.

For what its worth, I'd agree. I guess we don't and wont know those details until after the charge has been confirmed and closed. I'd be amazed if it was anything more than a iphone / small video camera (go-pro etc).

I've at no point suggested that we aren't at fault. I've been pretty clear in that I believe we as a club knew and that we will face a punishment for breaking the rule. Rightly so. My point being here, there is level of wrong doing and the punishment should take into account the level of wrong doing. Illegally breaking into a training ground is significantly more serious than being a touch opportunistic and looking over a hedge in a public accessible area.

I get what you're saying, but that is a ridiculously extreme example.

Bit of a broken drum about this, but there is a huge difference between rocking up to a public path and taking advantage of that vs breaking in and spying. Both are against the rules, but the threshold for punishment should be set considerbly different for each scenario. Much like it would be if you breach FFP rules by 100 million comapred to 1 million.

Asbolutely bonkers this is the set up for a professional, possibly premier leauge, football club. Simply put, they deserve it for being so stupid.

As shithouse as it would be, which I'd love to see, there is absolutely no way we will do anything to instigate a further complaint 😃

We also have a couple of ex boro coaches I beleive.

If i was to guess (perhaps head in sand), we have been tipped off by someone who previously worked at boro, that their traning pitch is visible from the public area. I'd like to think we aren't stupid enough to send someone snooping after illegally breaking into a training ground, like some sort of undercover mission. That would genuinely change my opinon on the matter. However, we've more than likley done it before to places that you can snoop on legally (in law) - I think you can see the Skate training pitch from a public area as well, for exmple. I very much doubt we're the only ones as well. Given, by the sound of things, the fella absolutely shit himself when challened, I doubt he has personally done it many times before.

So let me be clear. I firmly beleive the club knew about it. From the moment it broke, I thought it was pretty clear to be true. However, plenty of plausable excuses that would be difficult to prove against. Of the top of my head; 1. He works from home. We weren't aware he was AWOL. 2. Holiday. He was on holiday this day - dangerous game as there would be an audit trail behind that. 3. Sometimes they split between the training ground and stadium. It wasn't noticed he was gone. All pretty suspect excuses, but proving that they aren't true would be incredibly difficult

Knowing their line up, tactics, set peice routine etc. before a ball is kicked isn't a marginal gain imo. Knowing what to prepare for 2 days before a game is a pretty decent advantage. Obviously the players need to execute that plan and sometime they will just be better on the day (as seen saturday).

I'd love to get the opinon of someone who is legally clued up on these kind of things. If this was a criminal case, theres a strong arguement to have it thrown out for contempt, given their own manager has pubically said we are guilty and called us cheats before the investigation process has taken place. That's without factoring in all of the media leaks (clearly from them) coming from the North East Press. Have they essentially taken away our right and ability to a fair hearing? I'd argue yes. That's also ignoring the fact that they have a board memeber on the board of the EFL - I mean, talk about a vested interest (if we're booted out).

Its not a bad argument though. Almost impossible to prove, unless we're complete fucking dinlos and booked him a room under southampton football club or something (wouldn't be surprised). Given how lucrative the football industry is (and the fact our manager started as an analyst), its certainly plausable that a young man coming into the game might want to try and impress to climb the lader.