Lighthouse

They aren't a jury and they don't have connections. We haven't demanded they get replaced because this is very clearly just a bunch of whining nonsense. There's nothing to see here; a footballer who played one game for Boro in 1994 and a lawyer who was once paid to represent them in a completely irrelevant case eight years ago. Lawyers don't have tribal loyalty to people they've represented in court. They don't have half and half scarves at home with Ian Huntley on one side and Harrold Shipman on the other. Our defence, "not picking up on it," is all in your head. We haven't complained because there's nothing to complain about.

A week ago people were laughing at the Boro forum being, "a desperate, delusional echo chamber." I think trying to claim you're the victim of corruption because a member of the panel played one game on loan at Boro 32 years ago, is getting pretty deep into the same territory. It would be like claiming Andrei Kanchelskis is obviously corrupt in our favour.

On the contrary, I use a lot of the posts on here as compost in my garden.

I rarely agree with Duck but he's the voice of reason here. Which half truth in particular do you take issue with?

I haven't forgotten anything. Competing in the playoff final is literally the prize for winning the semi final, you don't get to just go to the final because you want to. We forfeited the semi because we cheated, now we don't get to play in the final. It's really that simple.

Well you're the one doing it, claiming the punishment is extreme and a club killer. It's neither. We've essentially been deducted two points per game in which we've been proven to be cheating and forfeited a third one which fell outside the league/points system. That's not extreme. I've seen Roma given a 3-0 forfeit for a CL match in which one of their fans chucked a lighter at the ref and cracked his head open. That's basically what we've been given.

They got a points deduction and are now in League 1, as did Sheff Weds. You don't think that's maybe quite an important difference?

If you cheat, you don't get to keep your winnings. It's that simple.

You're only writing it like that to try and trivialise what we've done. He was illegally recording the training and tactics of a team we were playing for a place in the PL. They knew it was wrong, they knew we'd get in trouble and they did it anyway. The fact that the bloke was completely incompentent in doing it doesn't make it any more acceptable.

No, the EFL have punished the club. The FA will now look into who was involved individually and look to hand out sanctions accordingly. I don't think this is bad news for Saints as such as those individuals are likely to be sacked very soon anyway. I can't see the club being handed more of a punishment, given what's happened.

If it's arbritrary then why did we break it? Why not send people to spy on Boro three months ago, then we'd get away with it? It's quite straight forward, the closer it is to the date of the game, the more of an advantage you're likely to have it. That's why we did it and that's why there's a rule against it. A large number of rules are arbitrary, that doesn't make them wrong. Drive at 31mph - you get fined Want to buy alcohol aged 17 years and 364 days - Nope

If we can find the right woman, they might enjoy it.

I agree. It's the first thing he's said in six years which doesn't read like it was written by someone who likes drinking paint.

'Being f**ked for years to come' will depend on us making the right decision, not the quick one. Will Still was appointed on 25th May, that's five days from now (four by the time the servers post this message) and look how that turned out. Tonda and anyone else involved will have to go but there're no prizes for getting it done by lunch tomorrow. Clearly we weren't expecting to have to find a replacement so suddenly like this, so I hope we take as long as is needed to find the right man and get him in.

On what grounds? Saying they only knew their opponent for the final three days previously is a pretty flimsy argument. That's basically what happens at every World Cup between each round of knockout games.