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You can blame Tonda and call for him to be sacked but what does that achieve for us. Getting rid of a clearly talented manager and motivator because the EFL have given us this unprecedented, disproportionate and highly controversial punishment.
More and more respected football commentators and pundits are saying this was hugely disproportionate and are shocked at the severity of the punishment
I don’t like Simon Jordan but generally he knows what he’s talking about. He said yesterday that this was ridiculous and disproportionate
So let’s look at this. We know what happened but why did the EFL come down so hard and massively out of proportion with the offence and any previous sanctions
The only thing I can think is that there was someone inside the EFL pushing for this and that points to Middlesbrough CEO and EFL board member Neil Bausor
If you look at this, it’s been engineered to allow Middlesbrough to get a second chance at getting to the playoff final, which shouldn’t have happened.
The EFL decided to allow two legs of football take place knowing the charge and that Boro had proof in the hope that Boro would win. They were beaten fair and square over two legs and were out. Then someone at the EFL decided the outcome of the game that they sanctioned to happen should be changed.
Sorry but those legs were played and Boro were knocked out. What the EFL had to look at now was the final and whether they’d allow Saints to play Hull. If the answer was no then Hull should have been promoted. Boro had been knocked out and had nothing more to do with proceedings. Where is the rule saying they could be reinstated.
The final should have been originally cancelled immediately and put back a week while this was resolved. It could have been played at a neutral ground like Old Trafford if Wembley wasn’t available
Instead the EFL have dragged this out and made it look like we were being reinstated by offering us additional tickets on the day of the first hearing just a couple of hours before the decision. This has led Hull to train to face us while all the time Boro have been preparing for Hull
So the whole thing seems to have been engineered to advantage Boro
Okay we can’t apparently appeal the decision, but we should check that’s the case, however there’s nothing to stop us asking for an enquiry into the severity of the punishment and the role played by Neil Bausor
No way can Tonda stay. He’s lost the respect of the players. Sadly he has to go. No way can we rebuild with him at the helm. Saints could sue the EFL but that it seems is unlikely to succeed and is very high risk. We should though be all over any future breaches and if they do not reflect our punishment then look at legal proceedings against the EFL.
“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously'
There is no way Tonda can stay, he sanctioned cheating more than once that’s not to be done The punishment however is OTT I have read in several place that if this was a manager led decision and players and club were unaware the expulsion is plenty and any further punishment should be Tondas to bear
It’s the timing of being caught that has resulted in the harshest punishment (and it is incredibly harsh). Had it been at any other point in the season, points deduction and a fine would have been handed out. Had it been in Feb or March, they’d probably have got 4-6 points deduction and moved on.
There was no way that EFL would allow a team to play in their big showcase game with this hanging over one of the teams.
Its rubbish especially for the players and the fans but once they were caught and at this time of the year, there’s no way they could have played that final.
There’s been so much focus on Saints’ punishment and so little on what happens next.
Boro were knocked out.
It’s very unlikely that what Salt obtained in Teesside made any difference to that.
Saints’ punishment was OTT and, it appears, designed to give Boro another go.
What we did was very wrong.
But this stinks of special justice at least partly designed to give Boro another chance that, having been serial bottlers all season, they simply do not deserve.
Pep Guardiola knows city are breaking financial rules yet keeps asking for more and more expensive players to give him a massive advantage over his rivals. How many of you would be asking for him to go? None of you
If we’d been reinstated and won the playoffs, how many would be calling for Tonda’s head? No-one
It seems everyone has got caught up in this media witch hunt against Saints
If Tonda stays and we walk promotion next season how many are going to refuse to go to games
Pep Guardiola knows city are breaking financial rules yet keeps asking for more and more expensive players to give him a massive advantage over his rivals. How many of you would be asking for him to go? None of you
If we’d been reinstated and won the playoffs, how many would be calling for Tonda’s head? No-one
It seems everyone has got caught up in this media witch hunt against Saints
If Tonda stays and we walk promotion next season how many are going to refuse to go to games
Take a step back and chill
He has lost the dressing room and the fans. There is no way he can stay on as our manager. He cheated. He got caught. He cost us. He has to go.
“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously'
He has lost the dressing room and the fans. There is no way he can stay on as our manager. He cheated. He got caught. He cost us. He has to go.
And you know he’s lost the dressing room how?? I take it you’ve been talking to the players?
This is exactly what I mean about the media driven hysteria over this case
I’m not arguing that Tonda made a mistake but get things into perspective. We spied on a training session which was stupid and may have got a minuscule advantage but probably not. Thanks to this media frenzy that everyone is caught up in and probably interference within the EFL by Boro’s CEO we get a ridiculous punishment
Chelsea broke multiple PSR rules over a 10 year period and got fined just under £11m and no points deduction. They weren’t thrown out of any cups and as a result of serious serial cheating they won a shed load of trophies.
There is not one Saints fan who can honestly say if we’d been allowed to carry on and beat Hull in the final that they were so outraged with Tonda that they’d be calling for him to be sacked. Everyone would be celebrating promotion singing Tonda Eckert’s red and white army
This is a huge stain on the club and will haunt us for years. However, when the dust settles a bit and those responsible are sacked/suspended/fined/slapped we will move on, as we always do.
I honestly don't think many genuine football fans expected us to be expelled from the play-offs - it's disproportionate. I imagine if Saints had been able to make that case during the original hearing it might not have happened but I guess you can't appeal against a punishment until the punishment has been issued; that's kind of how appeals work. Unfortunately, by the time the appeal was heard it was then too late for the committee to change their minds due to the sheer logistical chaos it would have caused.
I'm not defending the club at all - I feel angry and embarrassed right now - but I do think the EFL have a few questions to answer over why all this could not have all been dealt with last week, which would have been better for all clubs concerned.
This is a huge stain on the club and will haunt us for years. However, when the dust settles a bit and those responsible are sacked/suspended/fined/slapped we will move on, as we always do.
I honestly don't think many genuine football fans expected us to be expelled from the play-offs - it's disproportionate. I imagine if Saints had been able to make that case during the original hearing it might not have happened but I guess you can't appeal against a punishment until the punishment has been issued; that's kind of how appeals work. Unfortunately, by the time the appeal was heard it was then too late for the committee to change their minds due to the sheer logistical chaos it would have caused.
I'm not defending the club at all - I feel angry and embarrassed right now - but I do think the EFL have a few questions to answer over why all this could not have all been dealt with last week, which would have been better for all clubs concerned.
Totally agree
I think the unjustifiably disproportionate EFL punishment is actually skewing people’s judgement of what has happened. The only previous precedent is the £200k fine Leeds got
I think give Tonda a fine, move on and get promoted next season
My worry is we sack a very good young manager and replace him with Jones/Seles/Still Mark 2
Pep Guardiola knows city are breaking financial rules yet keeps asking for more and more expensive players to give him a massive advantage over his rivals. How many of you would be asking for him to go? None of you
If we’d been reinstated and won the playoffs, how many would be calling for Tonda’s head? No-one
It seems everyone has got caught up in this media witch hunt against Saints
If Tonda stays and we walk promotion next season how many are going to refuse to go to games
Take a step back and chill
Sorry Matt, love reading your posts but there is no way we will walk promotion next season with West Spam or Spuds, Wolves and Burnley coming down, those 3 will get promotion, the money will talk.
There’s been so much focus on Saints’ punishment and so little on what happens next.
Boro were knocked out.
It’s very unlikely that what Salt obtained in Teesside made any difference to that.
Saints’ punishment was OTT and, it appears, designed to give Boro another go.
What we did was very wrong.
But this stinks of special justice at least partly designed to give Boro another chance that, having been serial bottlers all season, they simply do not deserve.
And the fact that Boro have one of their senior employees on the EFL committee or whatever had nothing to do with that I suppose
The whole situation stinks and has been thrown totally all out of proportion
Sorry Matt, love reading your posts but there is no way we will walk promotion next season with West Spam or Spuds, Wolves and Burnley coming down, those 3 will get promotion, the money will talk.
Sorry Saintcole7 I didn’t mean I think we’ll walk promotion next season. I’d love us to but I’ll settle for scraping through the playoffs.
The point I was making was there is no-one on here demanding Tonda’s sacking who wouldn’t be chanting his name if he got us promoted next season
All clubs cheat, in all sorts of ways. You only have to look at the false outrage from all the clubs behaving exactly as a child behaves when someone else is caught out. You join in throwing the stones as hard as you can as though this makes you appear on the side of right. Southampton's problem was the sheer incompetence of sending an inexperienced panicky boy where richer clubs would employ a professional third party with all plausible deniabiity built in. Seeing that kid not hiding behind a tree was embarrassing enough; hearing how he left a perfect audit trail to his hotel after he ran away as well is worse. He might as well have used a club credit card to pay his hotel bill. In context I don't think the crime was that serious, when every club is tapping up players illegally through agents, placing stories to unsettle a target, practicing simulated trips in their training sessions, insensing fans after a goal with provocative gestures that incite violence between fans after the game, time wasting........ they all do it. Southampton crime was not so much to have cheated , it was to be so inept when they cheated.
Personally I'd keep tonda, but the club needs to make a statement and he's going to be it. Shame as he may well go onto be successful elsewhere. However I do think the family suspend him for a year or 2 which makes keeping him a moot point. We'll be looking for yet another manager.
Sorry Saintcole7 I didn’t mean I think we’ll walk promotion next season. I’d love us to but I’ll settle for scraping through the playoffs.
The point I was making was there is no-one on here demanding Tonda’s sacking who wouldn’t be chanting his name if he got us promoted next season
The point is that he will be sacked or banned whatever.
He has lost the dressing room, there are many reports that the players are taking legal action against the club for example and you think that can be resolved? Nope. The players feel cheated, Tonda + co has cheated and therefore he will get a ban anyhow so this is all a bit of a non-starter.
Clear out the cheats and start over, that's the only way.
I watched this last night, pretty damning and spot on:
I think at this point, to diffuse the situation, Phil Parsons should fall on his sword and quit. At the end of the day, the business is about football. What has happened has been a disaster for the club and the business. Which the buck stops with Parsons as CEO. It fell to him on how to defend this situation. And look how badly in retrospect we can see he got it wrong. We were like a lamb to the slaughter for not trying to diffuse the Boro media and EFL. It was summed up by his statement to the fans yesterday. A lot of hot air with nothing of substance. A good reflection of Parsons. Everything has been working out for Saints and we can see good in our DoF and Manager. It would be madness to throw that all away and start the Managerial merry go round again. And the fans haven't been singing Parsons name. It has been Eckert. Throwing that all away would mean starting all over, cost us a lot of money and put at threat our last season before we lose the parachute payments. The best way to protect that is if Parsons carries the can. Losing him will have the least effect on the club. Everyone moves on and by next season, from a footballing side our view of how we have been shafted will be very different. And I don't want to see Tonda tearing it up on the continent whilst we limp on with another Reuben Selles / Will Still appointment
Pep Guardiola knows city are breaking financial rules yet keeps asking for more and more expensive players to give him a massive advantage over his rivals. How many of you would be asking for him to go? None of you
If we’d been reinstated and won the playoffs, how many would be calling for Tonda’s head? No-one
It seems everyone has got caught up in this media witch hunt against Saints
If Tonda stays and we walk promotion next season how many are going to refuse to go to games
Take a step back and chill
We, the lifetime fans, can chill all we want but we don't have a place at this table.
Eckert is gone for all money...and should be.
The club is right now on a new pathway which has not insignificant chance of ending in administration/creditors voluntary liquidation. Mr Eckert has played a central role in putting us here...fill in the blanks.
Look at the clubs books even prior to all this...it's not a pretty picture...£60m loss last financial year...£90m debt...wages 75% of revenue.
Add to that rosy picture we now have the following outlook..No prem money..No management...No decent players...No sponsors...Toxic reputation hindering our marketing efforts..massive drop in our market value...we are damaged goods..who will touch us?
In the short term I think we will probably flirt with insolvency...trading insolvent is illegal btw....we need, minimum, £100m cash injection...Phuq knows where that will come from.
Trust me, we are doing Eckert a favour by shit canning the bloke.
Just an observation regarding the EFL’s behaviour which is rightly being questioned on this thread; the one person that so far hasn’t had much of a mention in the post appeal decision fall out is that whining sh1t-pig Gibson. He is a multi-millionaire with a previous track record for throwing vast sums of money at legal proceedings to get his own way. In this instance, aided and abetted by the bonus of having the Boro CEO on the inside at the EFL. Ginson had already very publicly indicated at the start of all of this that he would sue the arse off of all and sundry if he didn’t get his own way. I honestly believe the EFL were running scared of Gibson because of the consequences they would face if a fair and equitable punishment had been given to us. I can almost understand the original decision going the way it did all things considered. However, for the appeal to be rejected? That simply stinks because the grounds for the appeal were on the severity of the initial decision, the only precedent was the £200k Leeds fine,so, even factoring in my Saints bias, to uphold the severity of the original decision tells me not only are the EFL running scared of Gibson but seemingly the perceived threat runs even deeper. Money does indeed talk.
Just an observation regarding the EFL’s behaviour which is rightly being questioned on this thread; the one person that so far hasn’t had much of a mention in the post appeal decision fall out is that whining sh1t-pig Gibson. He is a multi-millionaire with a previous track record for throwing vast sums of money at legal proceedings to get his own way. In this instance, aided and abetted by the bonus of having the Boro CEO on the inside at the EFL. Ginson had already very publicly indicated at the start of all of this that he would sue the arse off of all and sundry if he didn’t get his own way. I honestly believe the EFL were running scared of Gibson because of the consequences they would face if a fair and equitable punishment had been given to us. I can almost understand the original decision going the way it did all things considered. However, for the appeal to be rejected? That simply stinks because the grounds for the appeal were on the severity of the initial decision, the only precedent was the £200k Leeds fine,so, even factoring in my Saints bias, to uphold the severity of the original decision tells me not only are the EFL running scared of Gibson but seemingly the perceived threat runs even deeper. Money does indeed talk.
Agree with pretty much all of that.
The EFL allowed Gibbo to dictate that the game had to be played this Saturday...At that point there wasn't a cat in hell's chance for our appeal to succeed.
We missed the boat..we should have hired the good Lord Pannick 10 days ago with the sole aim of ensuring the case had a full and honest assessment of the key issues ( particularly Proportionality) and fook their game date until some form of justice has been seen to be done.
All this talk of if the manger is sacked or not is irrelevant as the FA will ban him from managing the UK anyway. I don't blame SR in this case, they would have no say in training or day to day running of the club. All the analysts should be sacked as well they were carrying out the instructions of the manager knowing full well it was illegal. The only one I some sympathy for is Will Salt a youngster trying to get a career in football, he has now had his career ruined before qualifying It will be interesting to see how the club respond, all this talk of reduced season ticket next season will just mean less income that with reduced parachute payments. No way will Saints be able to compete. Many are already thinking about not renewing next year (including me!!) So the outcome of this could end with the club spending many years in the Championship or maybe even lower. This will last for a long time.(hope Im wrong)
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