@pedro There is an old saying ; "Hard cases make bad law".
You are right, this has all the hallmarks of one of those instances. The outcome should be obvious to the panel, but the inevitable consequences of disqualifying Southampton may deter them from reaching the right decision.
@chris-from-barlby I suspect there’ll been an almighty outcry if they bottle it. I can’t see SG rolling over very easily.
For me, if they’re not kicked out of the competition, I’ll be dismayed, even if they automatically promote Hull. The next best option would be a massive payout to MFC, but that will take a separate civil action I think.
@martin-bellamy All true. I think this will roll on for some time after this season.
Tommy Conway injury to require surgery. He will miss the World Cup and possibly pre season
Tommy Conway injury to require surgery. He will miss the World Cup and possibly pre season
I am absolutely gutted for the lad.
Everyone is talking about how unfair it would be for the final to be delayed or that Hull should go through automatically, should Southampton be denied the opportunity to compete in the final for a possibility of earning £200+m, to me those are totally irrelevant points, the only question the independent committee should be considering is, did Southampton cheat by spying on Middlesbrough training in the 72 hour period prior to the first leg, if yes what should the punishment be for Southampton and what compensation should MFC receive as the injured party.
Come on BORO.
@exmil. You are correct and in a perfect world that is how it would be dealt with. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world.
In the world in which we live in, money talks and often fairness and integrity are sadly cast aside. 😎
@k-p-in-spain At least we should never give up for the money players and people like Trump. We should always stand up for truth and equality.
Up the Boro!
Not much in the news regarding Spygate “2”, other than something may happen tomorrow.
However as teams start releasing their retained lists and what is happening to Boro loanees;
Tarrget out of contract as is Wildsmith, Browne has one year remaining on his Sunderland deal this summer, while it’s understood that Boro will be obligated to sign Sarmiento from Brighton, as per the terms of the loan deal agreed in January.
Well after all our wondering, will he, won’t he, it looks as though we will end up with Sarmiento, along with Sene, Hansen, Edmundson and Hamilton, who all need to be moved on, which will be one very difficult task.
@pedro. As well as Borges, Burgzorg, Silvera, Dieng, Gilbert and Bangura. 😎
@k-p-in-spain and Pedro
When you look at those names that we need to somehow move on, it confirms my concern that we are in no way ready for the Premier League without spending more than SG probably wants to!
Now a nice sum of compensation might help!
See that talk is of £20m for Hackney which seems a remarkably low figure from where I sit.
@k-p-in-spain ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️. although I believe Silvera is out of contract this summer.
When you think we used to complain about Burgzorg, but in reality he was probably the best of a bad bunch.
@boro-beckys-dad For past comparisons
Alex Scott. Bristol to Bournemouth. 25 mil
Adam Wharton. Blackburn to Crystal Palace. 22 mil
plus a good number costing a lot more, but they tend to be forwards.
I don’t think Boro should accept anything less than £30 million for the Championship player of the year.
I don't believe we will get a decision,in our favour
Couple of observations , the home team gets an extra 30 minutes on their patch.
We drew at home we drew away should it go to penalties after 90 minutes
If this was the fifth round of the Fa Cup, you know they are gone
The only thing we can hope for is a compensation package, and hope the staff get the players in we need, maybe three or four sold physical hate to lose type
So this is it. The day we hoped/feared.
Somehow, I don’t think Southampton deserve to go up. They cheated.
Up the Boro!
@pedro. Yes you are correct about Silvera’s contract end date. I believe that Dan Barlaser, who has been on loan at Hibs, is in the same situation.
When you look at the number of players we want to move on or contracts/loan dealings coming to an end it is nearly half the squad. Added to which we could also lose two/three first team players if decent offers are received.
KH is going to have an even bigger job on his hands next season no matter which league we are in! 😎
I am sure our recruitment team have all the players to suit KH's methods lined up already 😉
Judgement day dawns. Will Boro’s players finally get to jet off on holiday, or will we be planning an unexpected, exciting jaunt down Wembley way? Place your bets…….
I've kept out of the speculation, I just find it all totally frustrating and all created because of Southampton's display of arrogance and entitlement both before and after the event. Their manager's attitude just stinks, 'show some respect' I believe he said. He must have just found the word. The chaos and problems were created by Southampton FC and they need to be dealt with appropriately and you can't tell me he and his management team didn't use the information gained. A solo operator? Bollocks to that.
Boro lost the play-off, that I can live with, but how they censure them is somewhat tricky and has all the signs of being a prize lash-up. If they go up it's a travesty and I don't think that they will lose out either. It's going to be interesting to see the compromise miss that they come to.
Meanwhile, more importantly, UTB.
All the best everyone.
John
PS Secretly I hope that they get relegated and not promoted plus some add-ons.
Not much in the news regarding Spygate “2”, other than something may happen tomorrow.
Detailed analysis by the Beeb:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c87ql0g27jno
EG reporting that panel did not meet until this morning and hearing may go into tomorrow; I thought they were meeting over the weekend.
Unlikely we will hear anything today. 😎
EG reporting that panel did not meet until this morning and hearing may go into tomorrow; I thought they were meeting over the weekend.
Unlikely we will hear anything today. 😎
This gets more and more ridiculous by the minute.
It begins to more and more look like they really do want to push the decision so far down the road that the final is played as scheduled and Sinners are promoted and then there is diddlysquat anyone can do about it, exept leave Middlesbrough/SG to pursue Soton (and maybe the EFL ?) in the courts, in which case everyone will get sick of Boro and we become the "bad news" story of the coming season.
I agree, Powmill. Not even Brian Rix could make up a farce such as the EFL are conducting. Shambles.
@powmillnaemore - of course they do! There is no time to do anything now (and they knew that).
Probably hoping Hull win to (in their minds) make it easier.
Some people in the BBC are saying that we are the villains in the whole thing and are cheating because we lost! 🤣
If I were to put my money anywhere it would be on Southampton getting a relatively small fine and 3 point deduction next time they are in the Championship regardless of whether they beat Hull or not on Saturday.
The panel will find that there is insufficient evidence for anything else based on what excuses (sorry defence) Southampton come up with.
From the very beginning, IMHO, there was no way the EFL would reinstate Boro into the playoff final, the delaying tactics where a decision is going to be known 3 days before the final is played, is an indication that Southampton will be in the final.
The big question is will Steve Gibson have enough evidence to take the EFL/Southampton or both to court, weighted against the damage it could do to Boro in the future, as I see the EFL being a very vindictive (corrupt) organisation.
Come on BORO.
So this is the nonsense that passes for an independent disciplinary committee that includes a KC and 2 mediators - meeting just 4 days before a final that I assume most will have already booked transport. It seems their deliberations will be only a matter of hours before they give their learned verdict that will no doubt be appealed if it involves expulsion with probably the final played before any appeal is heard - absolutely no self awareness of the real world!
@clive-hurren - Brian Rix would at least have got some laughs out of the current situation rather than just a sickening stench.
I won't comment further at this stage about the wrongs (are there any rights?) of the attempts to observe Boro's training before the first leg of the Play-Off Semi-Final save to say that we do not know what effect that had on Boro. Perhaps, knowing they had been observed, some plans which had been made by Boro were hastily changed at the last moment for fear that previous intentions had been "rumbled"? The time to implement or practice such plans would have been massively curtailed. Even if no changes were made, it must have been unsettling for the staff and players for such an incident to be plastered around the news when everyone should have been allowed to concentrate on their preparation for the game.
A few weeks ago I had a discussion about how corrupt major sports are, with friends at The Strangled Stoat. One friend thought that corruption must be very rare, although it exists. Others tended to agree with me, that corruption may be more common in some sports and countries than others but that it exists everywhere and is more common all about us than at first might be suspected. I felt I only needed to mention some governing bodies to make the suspicion very real: FIFA, UEFA, the IOC for starters. If sports are corrupt at the top, they are unlikely to be pure down to the grass roots because the gravity of corruption seems almost destined to cause it drip down.
In football terms:
1. Bets being taken by players;
2. "Surprising" results in the World Cup*;
3. The 1965 banning from football for life and imprisonment of three Sheffield Wednesay players and one from Mansfield Town (as well as some who had previously been at Boro) for match-fixing and defrauding bookies by betting against their own teams;
4. What our very own Anthony Vickers described as the "very strong whiff of rodent" from Boro's back line after Charlton Athletic 6 - 6 Boro match in 1960;
5. In 2019 the EU Commission identified professional football as an obvious candidate for money laundering and deriving illegal income and with Europol identifying close links between organised crime groups with "betting-related match-fixing creating a steady stream of criminal income";
6. Some of the decisions to award penalties, goals or red cards (or not) and after VAR has been used when the replays suggest a very different outcome should have been identified by the referees but have still been ignored, especially in some very recent high-profile games;
7. The length of time it takes the authorities to rule on serious allegations of financial rules being breached (is it still 115 charges outstanding against Manchester City and will it take so long that there will be a new manager in place when anything is finally resolved?)...
8. Maradona - we can almost ignore the everday cheating by a player who would, anyway, have been so talented that he would always have been a "great", but cocaine use at Barcelona, a 15 months drigs ban when testing positively for cocaine playing for Napoli, being expelled in disgrace from the World Cup in the USA in 1994 (a failed drug test for ephedrine) and in 1997 when he failed a 3rd drug test when at Boca Juniors (which finally ended his career).
*Such as the 1978 competition held in military-controlled Argentina when unless Peru lost at least 4-0 Brazil would progress in the competition but their major competitors Argentina managed to beat Peru 6-0 so Brazil had to go home - with massive bribes & the Argentine born Peruvian 'keeper under a cloud.
I also raised the issue of cycling where drug-taking has been an issue for decades and where, more recently, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France a record 7 times but was long under a drugs cloud despite his claiming in defence to having been the most frequently drugs-tested athlete in the world (all negative at the time) before being stripped of all his titles in 2012 when proof became available. I also raised the issue of athletics where in the "Dirtiest Race in History" (the 1988 Mens' 100m Olympic Final) 6 of the 8 finalists later proved positive for performance enhancing drugs or were involved in doping offences throughout their careers. And of the 30 fastest times ever run in history, only 9 (all by Usain Bolt) had been run by athletes never implicated in doping. If proof ever emerges in the future that Bolt has been using banned drugs, then the sport might as well be closed down because nobody could have any faith in it any more. I hardly needed to mention boxing or horseracing (though I did)...
And all that was before the "spying" revelations involving the Boro v Southampton Play-Off game. Obviously I raised THAT when we met in the pub again.
The picture is one of murkiness where big prizes, and money, are involved. Do I have faith that a proper outcome will be reached at the end of the Tribunal which I believe is ONLY NOW getting down to hear the allegations against Southampton? No, not really. SOME findings might be made. Some penalties may be applied, but I doubt they will adequately recompense the wronged party nor will they adequately penalise the perpetrator if the offences are proved. I very much doubt that the result of the disciplinary process will make other clubs thinking of doing the same decide NOT to do it. It MIGHT make them do it in a more covert manner or in more deniable circumstances . Expect drones with surveillance equipment, loitering at altitudes which someone on the ground is not likely to notice, or sensitive listening equipment, and perhaps other schemes yet to be concocted.
I DID think that my amateur sport, hockey (the "real hockey, Jarkko, played on a grass field and often using the outfield at a cricket ground although astroturf is now very common, not the sport intentionally played on ice), played for the love of the game and the exercise, was not corrupt. But that was a minor sport in the scheme of things, with nothing of financial value at stake and certainly not something to attract betting or organised crime! I don't think my village cricket, or social cricket like teams of lawyers v teams of accountants etc, had anything suspicious about the games either. I suppose it might be different with the white ball (the number of people on County Cricket streams who clearly don't know much about the teams but are asking how many runs other viewers think Player X will score, or how many wickets Player Y will take - that makes me suspicious from the way it is raised and I note the mods quickly closing down those references).
Sport eh? Is it still the Corinthian object of our admiration?
Yes, good to see that the powers that be are treating the matter with the urgency it demands……..
I don’t want to pre-judge the outcome of the Committee findings but, regardless of what happens, it appears that the EFL have handled the whole situation very badly. Time was always of the essence in this particular case and to allow the decision to be known so late is a shambolic state of affairs.