James

The one thing that would p*ss off the fan base even more than the current debacle is to replace Tonda with Lallana. If we have to sack Tonda, it needs to be someone with instant credibility otherwise it’ll very quickly turn toxic.

Presumably Gibbo wasn’t able to persuade his mates to move the final. Giving them a free ride after they lost the semi was as far as they were prepared to go.

Maybe Gibbo would have been better off letting us beat Hull and then suing to replace us in the PL? 🤣

Only team to bottle the semi final and the final in the same season 😂😂😂😂

But he’s the bestest manager ever apparently 😂😂😂😂😂 bring on the home game next season. Let’s tell these morons what we really think of them.

God I am enjoying those Boro tears even more than I knew I would. See you next season lads!

Unlucky Karenborough FC 😂😂😂😂

I’m basically over it now in terms of this season/next season. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the media pile on and the sense that the EFL decided to throw the book at us because we are a small and less significant club. The sense of one rule for one and another for others will be permanent for me, the game and its governing bodies are absolutely rotten.

Given the way the panel handled the conflict, I agree that the only sanction they could have imposed (given they were minded to apply a harsh deterrent and not a slap on the wrist), was expulsion. Whether the panel could or should have delayed the second leg to give them more optionality is what is being debated. You act as if it was a given that no games could be moved and the panel had to move to a set timetable, clearly that is what they did but it wasn’t their only option.

Why not? Rather than just dismiss with an emoji, explain why that wouldn’t have worked.

Plenty of people have explained what could have been done, you just ignore it as “pony” because you don’t agree with anyone that doesn’t have the exact view you do.

F*ck off you patronising t*at.

Of course they could have, there will literally have been hundreds or even thousands of people they could have picked from. The whole thing stinks and if Saints didn’t due diligence on the panel members and raise objections then they are even more incompetent than I thought. It may not have made a difference but we will never know but being on the receiving end of a punishment which results in Boro being reinstated and the panel which decided that being comprised 1/3rd by an ex Boro player is just fucking shit.

Who knows but imagine for a second that a panel involving a random Saints player from the 90s (I’m going to select Tront Egil Soltvedt) and a retired partner from Paris Smith and Randall (who may not may not have been involved in a matter involving Southampton FC) had given us an unduly lenient punishment. Do we really think Boro would have been OK with that? Really?

In the same way that it didn’t matter whether we gained an advantage or not, it doesn’t matter that he only made one appearance. The guy played for Middlesbrough during the period of Steve Gibson’s ownership. There is no clearer conflict of interest than that. They only needed to find 3 people, surely there are other qualified people that haven’t played for fucking Middlesbrough. The whole thing stinks massively.

It takes literally five minutes to work this out with respect to both of them, two Google searches and you have found the answers…!

Member of the committee accused of not being independent, says he was independent. What a total non-story, what was he supposed to say? Another ball dropped by Saints IMO, should have pushed for both him and the barrister whose chambers represented Boro a few years ago to be removed.

I just cannot understand how an independent panel, which could presumably select from thousands of qualified people, is comprised of two people who have (however indirectly) a publicly identifiable link to MFC. I’m not saying it would have changed the outcome but it feels really naff.

Completely, but that doesn’t make it the right decision from the perspective of punishing a rule breach, it makes it an understandable commercial decision but not one that should be relevant if a fair procedure is followed.

The point is, the EFL and the Independent Commission have completely messed up any semblance of a fair procedure. Usually a club has a 14 day right to respond and a similar amount of time to appeal, most other of the cases cited even in the judgement took weeks to resolve rather than days. We are guilty, no question of that, but it’s the EFL that put the commission in a position where the only sanction that would satisfy the outside noise was expulsion. In my view, that doesn’t constitute a fair process. I think we’ve been treated incredibly harshly and will continue to believe that, notwithstanding the offences of our coaching staff which are clear.

Exactly this. The way that the Panel has applied the penalty is completely incoherent. They seem to have said the starting point is a 3 point deduction for every regular season game, with a point back as credit for us complying. The consistent way to apply the same penalty in the playoffs would be to award Boro a 3-0 win in the first game. We would likely have lost anyway but teams have come back from bigger deficits. The way the punishment has been applied to the Playoff game has essentially applied a sanction to the second leg even where there is no allegation of any wrongdoing. You can say that you feel our punishment is “fair” or whatever but these processes are worth millions of pounds and should be done properly. From what we are able to gather about this case, it doesn’t seem like proper procedure has been followed to me.

Not technically but they were a direct beneficiary of the punishment imposed.

If the BBC reported squad is correct there are a few pretty weird ones. No Palmer, Toney back in from nowhere, Henderson in…

What relevance has that got to whether or not one of the individuals tasked with deciding the punishment has a conflict of interest? I’m not saying that’s the case here, I’m just saying that in a commercial context it would be highly unusual for an arbitrator to have a prior client relationship with one of the interested parties.

Don’t agree with that at all. Lawyers might not have tribal loyalty but they do have conflicts of interest. In a commercial dispute, neither party would ever agree for one of the arbitrators (as an example) to be someone that had previously represented one of the parties. I don’t know all the facts here but, if one of the independent panelists had previously represented Middlesbrough, that would be a bit odd. There are thousands of qualified sports lawyers out there that would have zero connection to any interested party.